Things have been a bit intense for me lately. I think I’ve been doing the emotional equivalent of hiding underneath a rock. For a while we had gorgeous weather that enticed me out from under the rock when it was bright and cheerful, and then I wanted to retreat immediately at the end of the day. I’m not returning many phone calls; I’m pretending like I don’t exist on this plane, for just a little while longer.
With all this rain yesterday and today, however, my little hiding spot got a bit flooded and now I’m ready for change.
River got a job last week and I can’t wait for him to start. He says he still needs a week to prepare, to transition from being a home-based freelancer for two months to a bonafide, salaried employee again. I can’t fault him for needing the time, but it means he’ll be camping out for a few more days at his tentative desk in the bedroom. Actually I think the desk isn’t so tentative anymore. It’s better than where he was originally, camping out at the dining room table, far too close to my own desk. I found myself perpetually surprised by his presence. When he’s in another room, holed up wearing headphones as an audio barrier, I can forget that he’s around, and my day is less distraction-prone.
But back to the job. It’s a 40-minute commute south, and it’s essentially the fulfillment of all River’s dreams of what to do for work. Quite incredible. He’s waiting for someone to pinch him. It is good to see a permanent smile on his face again after so many weeks of uncertainty, and so many months before that of workplace unhappiness. Naturally, a steady paycheck will also be a very nice thing.
Last week, over dinner out at an Indian restaurant (the kids were away), River told me that it looked like I should scope around for full-time work, just to see what’s available, because he wasn’t getting much more than a nibble. He knew that working as a solo freelancer was only a stopgap approach to survival—a job as an employee, working in a team setting, has been his goal, but nothing was surfacing. Our priority was to stay located where we are, but the economy isn’t helping us do that. River was getting some interviews, but nothing was really going anywhere. It was a bit disorienting for me to consider seriously looking for full-time work, but I was (and am) ready to do what’s needed to support the family and enable River to be home-based, instead of me.
In considering this switch—something we’ve often tossed around as a potential change if and when needed—I jokingly whined that I wanted to be able to be the struggling artist at home—not the suit-wearing executive who supports my artist husband. As married entrepreneurial artists, we are constantly engaged in this dance of wearing hats that bear these different titles, and almost all of them entitle us to long nights of hard work and no sleep. Perhaps this is what propelled us headlong into parenthood, more than any other impulse. We love the long nights.
From a very practical point of view, River is eminently more employable than I am right now, given what we’ve been doing most recently. I have felt good about gradually ramping up into any employment, on an as-needed basis, including the option of graduate school as part of the process. With years of parenting under my belt, I recognize better than ever how drastic the changes can be from one year to the next in the family landscape. This gives me the wisdom to know that by going slow, I don’t feel completely thrown out of balance by anything in particular. There is no panic, no stampede. Everything is always going to be fine.
That very night, River scoped out Craigslist again for new listings. He robotically emailed his resumé to a new one that had popped up, while having a conversation with me about what types of jobs (for me) might meet our family needs. A voice in the corner of my mind was saying, “Isn’t it curious that he’s emailing out his resumé? What will come of that, I wonder?” Naturally, the next morning, someone wanted to talk with him by phone about that job… and then he wanted him to come in for an interview the next morning… and then he offered River the job the following day. Sometimes this is just how things go.
Thus perhaps a partial explanation for why hiding underneath a rock feels like a comfortable place when everything is moving by so fast—either that, or it feels like it’s not moving at all, and days are depression-prone. Makes a person feel a little lop-sided. Safer to pretend it will all pass before long. Whether or not it really will.
The upside of considering full-time work is that it helped me open a door I had been trying to keep closed in my imagination. I still don’t know if I will take one road or another at this particular fork—that is, give my extra available time to money-earning, or school, come fall or winter—but at least I know that we’ll have a means to put food on the table, and sometimes that’s more than enough.
We’re very excited to have River. As work progresses, keep us posted on anything we can do to make the work/home life combo as gracious as possible.
sportstechinc staff
Left by Krish on April 25th, 2006