When I first started this blog I had dreams of quitting my high stressed corporate job and trying my hand at being a stay at home Mom and maybe starting my own side business. Four years ago my husband Ken quit his job and was the stay at home Dad for our two kids, but he also started his own business. There were times when I would say to by husband, ‘why don’t you just go get a job, and I will stay home’, but we both had a dream. We felt that if we could make Ken’s business model work, I could quit my job and we would both have a lot more flexibility in life. Ken’s business had many failures and there were times I thought my dream would never come true, but we kept visualizing this thing happening. We were very grateful for what we had, but we always kept visualizing what we wanted our lives to look like. Well, I am happy to say, it worked! I quit my job last March. Ken and I spent those four years really getting our finances in order, socking away money and working on Ken’s business. During those four years, I actually thrived in my job. I was promoted to management, I created a really good name for myself in the company and there were parts of my job that I really enjoyed. I think because I always really thought that I would be quitting my job, that I was never ‘desperate’ and people could see that. I just always did the best that I could do everyday and I kept getting rewarded for it.
So, there is this funny cartoon video spoof that I saw where the Wiley Coyote’s dream of all dreams comes true, he gets the Road Runner. He is so triumphant, he gobbles him up and saves Road Runner’s skull as a trophy. Of course, then he has nothing to do, nothing to look forward to, nothing to work towards. He has a complete breakdown and identity crisis. When I saw that video before I quit my job, I knew then, that would happen to me too. I wasn’t sure what it would look like, but I knew it would happen.
One of the other reasons I wanted to quit my job was that I needed to help out my Mother. She had really been struggling with dementia over the past several years and it was just getting worse and I felt she didn’t have too many years left on this earth. I worried about her constantly. Every time the phone rang, I dreaded that something had happened to my Mom. On my very last day of work I got a phone call from Brother telling me that Mom was in the hospital with, what the doctors thought was Pneumonia. That night we found out that it was not Pneumonia but full on lung cancer. She had survived breast cancer many years before, but it had now come back with a vengeance and metastasized to here lungs as well as other organs. Thank God I was not working. My Mom quickly needed round the clock care with several people helping. Well, my Mom only lasted two weeks. It was a blessing that it she went quickly, but also very hard. So, now two of lives biggest stresses have happened to me in a two week time period, a parent dying and a change in job status.
Ironically, at the same time the two biggest stresses in my life were gone. My Mom and my job. I really didn’t know which way was up. My kids were a wreck. They lost their last Grandparent and now their Mom was running the house and there Dad wasn’t around so much. I had thought that I was going to really whip the house and kids into shape. Make my home a smooth running ship. Boy, was I ever delusional. When the kids got out of school for the summer they were not too thrilled to have Mom running the show. Mom is a lot more strict than Dad. The kids also really missed the structure that school gave them. We did a lot of fun stuff this summer, but it was exhausting. I have felt like a bit of a failure. The kids actually said to me ‘Why don’t you go back to work, we want to be with Daddy’. That was knife through the heart. I thought my house was going to be so clean and organized, but it is impossible to keep it clean and organized when four people are in it all day long.
The kids are now if school, my son is just starting kindergarten. So, I home without kids for several hours a day. I think this is going to be good for all of us. I feel like I can spend a lot of time with them, but I can also figure out what I want to do now. This is such a blessing and very exciting, but very scary. I had visualized quitting my job for so long and it happened. Now I have to figure out what to visualize on next……hmmmmm.