My Life Mission

They call the first month of unemployement the toughest.  You feel demoralized, undervalued, disliked, helpless, and lost.  Lucky for me, kids offer tons of distraction.  But, I've still been plagued with recycling thoughts and philosophies around my life direction.

Is it really ok that I'm not pursuing a career?  Is it really alright that my identity revolves around my children and home?

I always come to the same conclusion: yes it is, chill the f*** out and get a job when you need/want/feel like it!  I've bounced these thoughts off various friends.

The most encouraging folks have been my (ex) colleagues at work.  The team of three of us who got laid off together set up a recurrent weekly meeting to support each other for this first month.  They've been my most fervid cheerleaders of stay at home parenting.  Steve's wife left her career as a chemical engineer 18 years ago and never looked back.  He choked up on the phone recounting the profound impact of her decision, "Our kids are so great, we've never had a problem.  I know I owe this to her being there.  She can sense if something is wrong and talk to them about it.  She teaches them and guides them though discovering as they grow."

Kate also stayed home with her children, supplemented income by providing in-home daycare, and only went back to work after her children left for college.  "I can't stress enough how important I feel it is to be at home with your children.  Actually, when I went back to work my son started having trouble in school and I didn't hear about it for a month.  Then I decided to cut back on working and focus on volunteering at the school.  My son needed more attention than my daughter and if I wasn't around then I don't think he would have turned out as well."

But I was still harboring these incessant thoughts of 'what to do with my life.'  Feeling like my parents had worked so hard to give me choices and opportunity and I'd be dishonoring their investment in my education to throw my career away.  Yes, that's what consciously deciding to not get a job feels like: tossing my vested experience to the birds.

I never particularly desired a career in IT and I frequently daydreamed about transitioning into health sciences.  I studied psychology in undergrad and enjoyed participating in the research community.  Last week I checked out a local Master's of Acupuncture program and then began investigating whether I would qualify for low cost daycare through Virginia Social Services.  I just kept feeling the need to do something.  But knowing that would add another layer of complication to our family life.

My mind took off in-flight chasing jets planes of hypothetical life scenerios, shooting each one down, and always landing at the same conclusion: "chill the f*** out, enjoy the kids, you can pick up a profession later in life."

Then, peace at last.  During our last call Kate asked if I had any short term goals for my time with the little ones.

No.  I didn't.  I dodged the question by asking if it was crazy for me to wait until the kids go to school to get a job. To which she went into a long response about how not-crazy that is.

This weekend I sat down and drafted a mission statement, themes, and short and long term goals for my life. Writing these thoughts down brought me such peace!  Freeing the obsessive repetitive thoughts, placing them on paper, looking at them, analyzing them, finding comfort and security in them...  I feel so much better.  Somehow seeing my plan on paper, in crayon, grounded me.

Now here's the giveaway that I come from corporate America; I aligned each goal with themes from my life mission.  A funny thing happened when I brainstormed the themes: I realized achievement is important to me.

Not to say that raising kids isn't an achievement!  But, frankly, I'd like to go on to do something GREAT eventually.  Like, earn-a-page-about-me in Wikipedia kind of GREAT.  What's funny is that I hope my kids grow up to be happy and generally successful.  Why do I hold myself to a higher standard?  I don't know.  I'm not humble I guess. I'd really like to accomplish something significant for society.

So I realized I definitely want a professional identity outside of the home - and that can be a part of my long term goal.  I can see how focusing on my kids and family now fits into my life mission.  This stage doesn't need to feel like a step back, or a PAUSE button, but really another stage in my development.  It feels secure and smart to focus on certain elements of my mission now and take on longer term elements as the appropriate time arises.

I also realize that going back to work in IT could be a part of my future if I need the income to maintain the Mission Theme of "Comfort."  Seeing how working in IT could fit into my life mission helped me make peace with the possibility that I may need to go back to work.  So if it happens, I'm not allowed to whine about selling out my soul anymore.

Would you like to see?  Here it is anyway.  Work in progress.  I left space to add more goals.  Written in crayon (no spell checker - ugh - embarrassing), taped to the wall in our room, subject to change and evolution.

If you're interested in doing a mission statement exercise, I'll share my process.  Google search reveals lots of websites with instructions much more intensive than mine.
1. Brainstorm words that capture your particular values
2. Group the words and identify the key themes and how they relate
3. Form sentences that join the words coherently and logically
4. Keep it short and sweet
5. Then draft some goals, start with some really easy and simple ones.  See how they align to your mission themes.
6. Make a goal (long or short term for each of the themes)
7. Enjoy the feeling of creating a path for your personal nirvana

Let me know how it goes

Laid off

Over a week since being laid off, or put on 'redeployment' as they now call it (see next paragraph for explanation), and I haven't felt much urge to write. I guess I'm still adjusting to the new life of no trips to the office, no meetings to attend, and no work emails to respond or route. My mind gratefully evicted the amphitheater reserved for work stuff: to-do lists, stress over future meetings, recycling of "shoulda said this" conversations, drama with coworkers, and my constant dissonance between over-achievement and jadedness. I'm happy to purge those dumb workplace preocupations.

The redeployment period should really be referred to as the SH Memorial Month. A Vice President with over 22 years with the company, initials SH, committed suicide after being let go after the last Reduction In Force (RIF). Now the new policy is to offer a month of redeployment in which employees can seek other positions in the company. It gives us a glimmer of hope and hopefully prevents us from shooting ourselves.  I don't mind because it gives me a month to use up my Flexible Spending Account before my insurance coverage runs out.

I'm not even bothering to look for another position. They've had layoffs every quarter since I started working there. I've had five different bosses in the year and a half. Dysfunctional.

Today I organized our family's socks. I took every single sock, matched them with the pair, and threw away the ones with holes or without matches. The laundry bin full of mismatched socks has now finally been made void. Do you have any idea how good that feels?!

Shit like that accumulating, itching, tormenting me with shallow pangs of exhaustion and defeat. Knowing the backlog of things to deal with would never reach sock basket level of priority.

So I'm enjoying the downtime to get caught up.  I've done the dishes every day this week.  I call that an accomplishment.

But, we've also been out and about as usual.  Some photo highlights:

Kaio's learned how to work the camera.

Making time for puddle splashing




this was not staged

Starting a band at Brewfest

Little doll relishing fresh squeezed while we enjoy brews





Reconstructing Angry Birds


Kaio busted her Angry Birds castle, then shot Nene crying

First carrot! kinda stubby


Kaio's pick of me

Turning a New Leaf

The great thing about being kicked out of the corporate world is that you don't need to spend money on stupid professional looking blouses, suits, and jewelry.  I can go back to shopping at thrift stores.  I can dye my hair purple and pierce my lip.  I can erase the uncomfortable memories of feeling confused, bored, and out of place.

I've been secretly (and not so secretly) praying for this moment.

It's going to be tough to survive on one salary, it really is.   So I'm worried, but optimistic.  Scratch that. Scared.  I've been bored out of my mind at work and hoping for this chance to reset by goals and direction.  But staying home all day with a cranky disobedient four year old will be a major test of my mothering instinct and resilience.

Jungle Yoga in the House

Things have been crazy, crazy lately.  My work had a rif, laid off 70 people.  The two friends sitting next to me at the office were let go. Secretly I wish it had been me.

I'm younger, have a husband, and would just adore to stay at home with the kids while collecting unemployment.  

 Shhhhhh.  don't tell anyone I said that.  
The bank would also have to work with us to refinance our house at an affordable rate.....  wouldn't that be dreamy.

Too bad they kept me.
I'm younger, I probably make less money than my coworkers did.

So now I've been picking up the work of two people.  This includes late night calls with counterparts in the Philippines and Australia.  Every night this week I've been up till midnight working and meeting with folks on the other side of the world.
I asked Mariano to take over putting the kids to bed.
That helps although he's not too excited about it since it cuts into prime-time History Channel programing.

 We've been having a grand time playing in the snow this year.  The latest challenge being the kids swiping toys from each other.  Sometimes they share so good, but other times, I feel so damn chiche, "Give the (insert object) back to (insert kid).  You have to wait your turn."

Since when did I become a mom?  Like a repertoire of mom phrases paratroop into your vocabulary once the kids turn into kids.

We found an ice rink that is reasonably priced and went last week for a skate.  Kaio picked up on it.  Nene loved the skating until she fell for the dozenth time and then started to cry.
They both want to go back.

I've been getting in the habit of soaking our grains since reading this post in Nourishing Practices.  To my surprise, I actually feel a notable difference after eating.  We eat tons of grains cause they're cheaper.  And Kaio likes them.  Typically I can only eat them one or two days a week and then my taste buds just totally turn off to them and I end up going out for lunch.  They feel heavy in my belly after eating.  I get lethargic and just generally don't want to eat anymore.

But since we've been soaking with whey, I can eat tons of grains and enjoy them to the last bite.  They must be digesting easier.
This is awesome cause it means I haven't been spending money going out to eat at lunch or dinner.
This month is all about saving cash for something exciting.  Not sure what.  but something exciting.

Nene's the sweetest little thing in the world.  She went outside, planted a stick, and watered it for half an hour. Repeating: "Nene's watering the plants, mamae."  When I asked her what kind of plant it was: "It's a cake plant."  Then she went off searching for presents to leave for the tree fairies.    

 That is the spot where our bee hive will go.  We started the first class last weekend.  I also ordered a dozen coturnex quail eggs!  We'll have our baby birds hatching in about a month!  yikes.  I'm imagining the pitter patter of baby quail feet.

 I missed my weekly yoga class and took a shot at doing the yoga at home.  I almost got through a vinyasa, when the kids turned me into their own jungle gym.  Introducing Jungle Yoga.

 Bad hair morning, but cute munchkins.

A Turning Point

I send my application to acupuncture school today! Yipee off it goes. It feels right, it feels really right, and every thing seems to fit. My plans, my clothes, and the dishes even all fit in the dishwasher. So now I've got two happy days under my belt and my aura is glowing with potential. Our home value seems to be moving out of the red, which got my man and I delighted about being able to move to some farm land in the maybe not too distant future. He wants to raise all kinds of crazy animals that he's been researching, like alpaca and some other creatures that I forgot. I even got a call back for an interview for one of the jobs I applied for. But I'm not planning on going, I'm really serious about acupuncture and I'm putting all my eggs in that basket. It just took me a few years of doing something else to realize what I want my career to be. I'm kinda slow that way. Even after high school I took a year off and worked at Party City, to realize that college was the way to go. So now my time working in IT has been a necessary step in my maturing process. I know that most people know what they want to do or be early. But It took me a few years to really decide what I want to be when I grow up.

I don't remember feeling this anxious and excited since before Nalini was born. M and I were so in impassioned back then. But, then the extra responsibilities of having two children became a lot for us to handle and we lost some energy for each other. These last couple weeks we've hit a bit of a grove and things are easing up. I know its not going to last of course, but I'm writing about it so I can look back in a couple months and remember that there was a time when life seemed manageable.