Life's Disappointments

I'm about to spend several paragraphs bemoaning the fact that I have to work. Mind you, this is not as contradictory to my post yesterday as it may seem at first. I don't hate my job. I just hate having to work. If I do have to work, this is where i want to be doing it; I just don't want to work.

So, with that "don't call me a hypocrite" comment out of the way...

For the past few months, I've been working half-time. Normally, i work 80 percent time, taking off the equivalent of one day a week, but spread out over the week in various chunks. But when the book stuff got hot and heavy, I backed off and went down to 50 percent. It wasn't enough. What I really needed was to just have one job at a time--writing the book OR working here--so that I could do it well.

I figured that, once the book was done, it wouldn't be that big a deal to go back to my former 80 percent. But it's coming up, week after next, and it is a big deal. Heck, coming in just 50 percent of the time is a big deal. There are so many other things I want to be doing, and my job, right now, just isn't one of them.

What *do* I want to be doing? I want to be working up a proposal for another book. I enjoyed this one immensely, if you take away the enormous deadline pressure. I'd do another in a heartbeat, if it weren't so tightly scheduled.

I also want to be spending more time helping out at Em's school. I'm involved--don't get me wrong. I'm more involved than a good three-quarters of the parents. But I'd like to do it without it being such a huge added pressure on me, and it wouldn't be if I didn't have to try and fit it in between work commitments.

And I want to keep N home more often. For a long time I liked having him in full-time, five-day-a-week daycare, because he was a difficult two-year-old, and I needed the help. Not to mention that I spent a good chunk of last year being an insane person. So having sane people caring for him was a Very Good Thing. But now, he's a lot easier, and so much fun to be with. And I'm relatively sane. (Shut up, you.) A part-time preschool situation would be just fine now, if I could devote time to him when he wasn't there.

I want to be doing more reading, doing some of my many crafts. My tatting is simply being neglected these days, and that's too sad.

I'll never be in a position where I don't do any work, ever. Heck, even if I weren't working here, I'd probably do freelance projects for them all the time. I care about this place, and I care about this office's mission. I just hate being handcuffed to a job because I'm the sole provider for our family so much of the time. And even when I'm not, Baroy's work doesn't come with stability, or benefits. And I'm all about stability and benefits.

This is just a rant--the same one I've done several times in the past less-than-a-year since i started this blog. It's not a request for suggestions. Whatever you're thinking I should do, I've thought of, and I have a good reason why we're not doing it. It's just that I get sad about the way things are turning out in my life sometimes. It's not like they're completely horrible, or even a majority horrible. It's just that this is not how I figured I'd spend my life, having to not only work, but do so in order to put food on the table and clothes on the kids. It's the way it's turned out, though. Someone has to do it, and the way things are, it's me. And I'm disappointed. I'll get over it, but it's how I'm feeling today...