The wheels are in motion
I usually fall silent in my blog due to:
a) lack of sleep
b) shortage of coherent thoughts (often as the result of a)
c) too many thoughts swarming in my head
Recently it’s been the last one. I started the negotiations to arrange my return from maternity leave, starting with working on part-time bases (about 20 hours/week) from home. And I’m full of conflicting thoughts and emotions since the questions of returning to the office and to the fulltime work were already asked. There are so many ifs.
I look at how little time my husband has to spend with Cat and I know that I’m not going to be comfortable with seeing my daughter only for 30 minutes in the morning, 30 in the evening and two weekend days. The best moments I have with her are the ones when I don’t feel any pressure to get other things done and have plenty of time to be silly and relaxed. The other day I spent ages trying to get her to smile (think she is teething again) and just as I gave up she looked at me, squashed her slimy hand into my face and started laughing. As the MasterCard ad says – priceless. I want my days to be full of moments like that. I don’t want to pay someone else most of my salary to experience that joy instead of me.
At the same time I know that the longer the break the harder it will be to get interesting work. After working really hard for the last few years, it seems unfair to have to start from the beginning again in few years time.
Maybe the decision would be easier if I didn’t like my company and the people I work with. Or if I didn’t have good career opportunities in my current job available NOW. Or if I knew that I would be able to return to the same level after 2-3 years break. Or if doing plenty of unpaid overtime wasn’t the norm. Or if I didn’t love being able to spend some of the daylight hours outside (it gets dark at 4pm here!) Or if I didn’t enjoy having a reasonably clean house and nice home cooked dinners and baking and having time for myself to read, crochet or just stare into space. Or if there were relatives and friends who could help to take care of Cat.
Or maybe it wouldn’t be any easier. Maybe any decision will be a temporary compromise to be constantly rethought and re-evaluated while I try to figure out my own life values and how they fit together. Fitting them all together seems to be the hard part.
P.S. If everything goes well I’ll be starting parttime work from home on 13th of August.
2 comments:
I think it is a problem that all mothers face in todays society. Women have babies much later in life now, after they have established careers for themselves. So to give up a career is very hard. But to give up being with your child is just as hard. It's not an easy decision to make. Good luck with it all!
Well you can always give it a try and see what happens - I mean one can always be unemployed, but employed is harder. But reason aside - it's always tough to make choices... for us atm it's the big one of whether to go back or not, although I think we have sorted most of it out - at least the things we'll base the decision on :)
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