Thinking out loud
Agonizing a bit about difficult life choices. For those who've not followed this saga elsewhere: I'm trying to decide whether to go back to work, and if so, which job and when. There are some big concerns with mental health, bandwidth and money involved:
Job A: A new job with my old team, doing something rather more new and interesting than I was before, involving social media coverage of entertainment. I'm all but guaranteed to get this, though I've not yet heard back from my agency confirming it.
I also have my name in the hat for another job, this time with a team I've been dying to get in on, doing something resembling Real Journalism for the election next year.
Overall pros for both: Money (see more deets about that below), and something to keep me busy/distracted while I'm transitioning out of fandom, and, in the spring, sitting around waiting to be chosen by a birthmom.
Overall cons for both: January and early February are a mess for me. I've been told I need (expensive) dental surgery, we'll be doing hardcore home study/adoption-prep stuff, and I have a chorus concert to do. Oh, and jury duty. Bleh. All that, and our 15th anniversary is in Jan, and we were hoping to do something special for it. Any thoughts of having time/bandwidth to write, much less do anything else that's mental-health-improving, are out the window.
Job A Pros: Open-ended contract, very good pay, very little rampup time needed, known quantity wrt team, boss, etc., and ~70% work-from-home.
Job A Cons: Full-time, so a huge time sink, which means Jan/Feb are going to suck ass. Depressing feeling of contributing to the fall of Western civilization due to subject matter. Will want a commitment in a very short time frame.
Job B Pros: Real Journalism! A chance to feel like I'm involved in something that matters. Getting my food in the door with that team, which I've been dying to work for. Part-time, with a weekend/evenings sked that could even allow for keeping up with it post-baby.
Job B Cons: No clue at all whether I'd get it, even though I'm very qualified. No idea what the team's like. Year-long contract commitment. Much lower hourly rate than the other one, plus part-time means probably 1/3 of the pay. Also, given the subject matter and the necessity of being politically neutral, chances are good my head may explode.
Now, in an ideal world, here's what would happen: I'd get Job B, and they'd be fine with me starting in February, so I could survive January's nightmare schedule. I'd work there through our waiting time in the adoption pool, and then either quit entirely or take leave when the baby shows up, or maybe even only take a couple of weeks and then go back, as the schedule is childcare-friendly enough. And if the job turned out to be hell, I could find a way to leave without burning too many bridges. Ditching a contract before its end is bad form, definitely, but not unheard of, especially for parental leave.
Theoretically, I could also leave Job A at any time without too much drama--the open-ended contract helps a LOT with that---but the time/mental-health drain of it in the short term would make doing everything else really difficult. Really, the biggest reward of Job A comes down to one thing: Money. Quite a lot of it. And fast.
The dilemmas:
-Putting off Job A long enough to find out about Job B without making them want to withdraw the offer.
-If I turn down either or both jobs, trying to ensure that my agency doesn't decide I'm a flake and want to stop giving me assignments at all.
-Surviving January, and also surviving the next 2.5 weeks, wherein I try to stuff everything else I need to get done before I no longer have the time to do it in.
-If (as I'm somewhat inclined) I were to decide to take neither job, finding a way to come up with the ~$6k necessary for my stupid dental surgery, plus all the other little expenses that will no doubt show up.
The money dilemma has a few different components:
-We dropped our adoption savings into paying off the credit cards. A good decision, IMHO, from the saving-on-interest POV, plus the not-giving-money-to-banks one. And not as drastic as it seems, because ...
-We're doing well enough from M's pay alone that we can afford to put away a fairly decent chunk of cash every month. Plus, there's every chance that we may not get picked by a birthmom/have to come up with the enormous agency fee until next September's annual bonus/stock windfall.
-In fact, the money we're putting away every month is about the same as I'd make in pay for Job B, so it would just be doubled/take less time to build up. Job A, on the other hand, would make enough money to pay for the dental surgery and the adoption, entirely on its own, by July. In combo with the existing savings plan, we'd have it all nicely tucked away by my birthday.
-The dental surgery won't be until summer (I'll need healing time from the much-cheaper stage 1) and they have a 12-month, no-interest option. So we wouldn't need to come up with the whole $6k in one chunk immediately.
-If the adoption happens sooner than yearly-windfall time, or the surgery requires an earlier payment, we can easily take a fairly healthy, low-interest loan from M's 401k, and pay it off within a year or two, at the most. And if worse came to worst, we could also use some from our virtually empty credit cards, too. The only real disaster scenario--and this is the case no matter what I do--is if M were ever to lose his job.
Or, in summary: We don't absolutely need money from me working in order to make this all happen. It would just make things easier, faster and more secure.
Closing arguments:
On a purely practical, sensible level, of course I should go back to work, and take the job with the most pay, so we don't have to worry about credit of any sort, and also because it's the supposedly moral thing to do. "Idle" hands and all that. My Puritan work ethic/working-class background always makes me feel guilty if I go any length of time without working in a job that sends me a W2 every year. The other "work" I do doesn't count, according to many, because I'm not getting a regular paycheck from it. I always kinda worry that other people--even friends--may resent the freedom I have to even deliberate on things like this, because most everyone else I know "has" to work to get by, and is in truly scary shape if they can't find a job.
Also, in sensible terms, I know very well that going too long without a resume item is a red flag for future employers. If, as I've considered, I don't go back to work until the kid's a year old, that would make nearly three years in a row with no work history. Bad Idea for anyone hoping to be able to get a job again someday (and why there are so many divorced/widowed women with kids who are in horrid financial shape. They played mommy for a decade while daddy worked, then he went away and they're stuck with no marketable job skills/history.)
I get all this. I do. However ...
On a personal, mental-health level: I really don't want to work right now, regardless of the pay, unless I'm doing something that will A) be intellectually/personally fulfilling and B) Further my career beyond just adding another year at the same place to my CV. I'm too old and too tired these days to want to waste any of my life on a job that sucks my time away and makes my soul cry, even if I'm very good at it, even if it's sort of in my career field, even if jobs in this field of any kind are scarce and I'm lucky to be offered one, and even if it's paying me three times what I'd make doing the biological office equipment shit I spent ~15 years doing.
Fact is, I'm no longer a struggling 20something who absolutely has to take any job she's qualified for to pay the bills. I've done that. I did that for a Very Long Time. I feel like I've paid my dues where that's concerned. In the position we're in, money, in and of itself, is simply not enough of a justification for me to do something that wastes my bandwidth and makes me feel like crap. I don't want to retire yet, per se, I just don't want to "work" anymore. I want a capital-C career, not a contract button-monkey job that pays me by the hour, rather than using my unique skills and strengths.
The Bottom Line:
The next phase of my life, in my ideal world, will consist of five things: Kid, writing, singing, friends/family and travel. Anything that doesn't fall into furthering one of those five categories is something I don't want to have to spend time/effort on.
I realize how very lucky I am to even have this choice to make, and I'm grateful to M's brain and the luck of the stock market from 15 years ago that made this happen. But I do have this choice, and I don't like feeling that I'm being selfish or irresponsible if I choose to do what will make me happy over what will fatten our bank account. Money for its own sake doesn't interest me. We have enough of it to have and do the things we want, so long as M keeps working. More of it isn't nearly as necessary to me as feeding my soul. And stuff that will take away my bandwith for singing and writing, without giving me anything in return but a paycheck, is actually starving it instead.
I should probably also mention: I know there are times--quite a lot of them--that M hates working, too. But in his case, he's also doing it for the love of the work itself. He was one of those lucky sorts who found his career calling early, and was a rare enough genius in his field to be able to get a well-paying job when he was very young. He's never even had a day of college, and was a mere pup of 21 when he started working at The Company. He's had bad positions there, and even now, we're fussy because this particular gig is stealing a lot of his time, but in terms of what he actually does for a living, he loves it. Same as I would do if I had the capital-C Career I want, rather than this generic button-pusher crap.
Job A: A new job with my old team, doing something rather more new and interesting than I was before, involving social media coverage of entertainment. I'm all but guaranteed to get this, though I've not yet heard back from my agency confirming it.
I also have my name in the hat for another job, this time with a team I've been dying to get in on, doing something resembling Real Journalism for the election next year.
Overall pros for both: Money (see more deets about that below), and something to keep me busy/distracted while I'm transitioning out of fandom, and, in the spring, sitting around waiting to be chosen by a birthmom.
Overall cons for both: January and early February are a mess for me. I've been told I need (expensive) dental surgery, we'll be doing hardcore home study/adoption-prep stuff, and I have a chorus concert to do. Oh, and jury duty. Bleh. All that, and our 15th anniversary is in Jan, and we were hoping to do something special for it. Any thoughts of having time/bandwidth to write, much less do anything else that's mental-health-improving, are out the window.
Job A Pros: Open-ended contract, very good pay, very little rampup time needed, known quantity wrt team, boss, etc., and ~70% work-from-home.
Job A Cons: Full-time, so a huge time sink, which means Jan/Feb are going to suck ass. Depressing feeling of contributing to the fall of Western civilization due to subject matter. Will want a commitment in a very short time frame.
Job B Pros: Real Journalism! A chance to feel like I'm involved in something that matters. Getting my food in the door with that team, which I've been dying to work for. Part-time, with a weekend/evenings sked that could even allow for keeping up with it post-baby.
Job B Cons: No clue at all whether I'd get it, even though I'm very qualified. No idea what the team's like. Year-long contract commitment. Much lower hourly rate than the other one, plus part-time means probably 1/3 of the pay. Also, given the subject matter and the necessity of being politically neutral, chances are good my head may explode.
Now, in an ideal world, here's what would happen: I'd get Job B, and they'd be fine with me starting in February, so I could survive January's nightmare schedule. I'd work there through our waiting time in the adoption pool, and then either quit entirely or take leave when the baby shows up, or maybe even only take a couple of weeks and then go back, as the schedule is childcare-friendly enough. And if the job turned out to be hell, I could find a way to leave without burning too many bridges. Ditching a contract before its end is bad form, definitely, but not unheard of, especially for parental leave.
Theoretically, I could also leave Job A at any time without too much drama--the open-ended contract helps a LOT with that---but the time/mental-health drain of it in the short term would make doing everything else really difficult. Really, the biggest reward of Job A comes down to one thing: Money. Quite a lot of it. And fast.
The dilemmas:
-Putting off Job A long enough to find out about Job B without making them want to withdraw the offer.
-If I turn down either or both jobs, trying to ensure that my agency doesn't decide I'm a flake and want to stop giving me assignments at all.
-Surviving January, and also surviving the next 2.5 weeks, wherein I try to stuff everything else I need to get done before I no longer have the time to do it in.
-If (as I'm somewhat inclined) I were to decide to take neither job, finding a way to come up with the ~$6k necessary for my stupid dental surgery, plus all the other little expenses that will no doubt show up.
The money dilemma has a few different components:
-We dropped our adoption savings into paying off the credit cards. A good decision, IMHO, from the saving-on-interest POV, plus the not-giving-money-to-banks one. And not as drastic as it seems, because ...
-We're doing well enough from M's pay alone that we can afford to put away a fairly decent chunk of cash every month. Plus, there's every chance that we may not get picked by a birthmom/have to come up with the enormous agency fee until next September's annual bonus/stock windfall.
-In fact, the money we're putting away every month is about the same as I'd make in pay for Job B, so it would just be doubled/take less time to build up. Job A, on the other hand, would make enough money to pay for the dental surgery and the adoption, entirely on its own, by July. In combo with the existing savings plan, we'd have it all nicely tucked away by my birthday.
-The dental surgery won't be until summer (I'll need healing time from the much-cheaper stage 1) and they have a 12-month, no-interest option. So we wouldn't need to come up with the whole $6k in one chunk immediately.
-If the adoption happens sooner than yearly-windfall time, or the surgery requires an earlier payment, we can easily take a fairly healthy, low-interest loan from M's 401k, and pay it off within a year or two, at the most. And if worse came to worst, we could also use some from our virtually empty credit cards, too. The only real disaster scenario--and this is the case no matter what I do--is if M were ever to lose his job.
Or, in summary: We don't absolutely need money from me working in order to make this all happen. It would just make things easier, faster and more secure.
Closing arguments:
On a purely practical, sensible level, of course I should go back to work, and take the job with the most pay, so we don't have to worry about credit of any sort, and also because it's the supposedly moral thing to do. "Idle" hands and all that. My Puritan work ethic/working-class background always makes me feel guilty if I go any length of time without working in a job that sends me a W2 every year. The other "work" I do doesn't count, according to many, because I'm not getting a regular paycheck from it. I always kinda worry that other people--even friends--may resent the freedom I have to even deliberate on things like this, because most everyone else I know "has" to work to get by, and is in truly scary shape if they can't find a job.
Also, in sensible terms, I know very well that going too long without a resume item is a red flag for future employers. If, as I've considered, I don't go back to work until the kid's a year old, that would make nearly three years in a row with no work history. Bad Idea for anyone hoping to be able to get a job again someday (and why there are so many divorced/widowed women with kids who are in horrid financial shape. They played mommy for a decade while daddy worked, then he went away and they're stuck with no marketable job skills/history.)
I get all this. I do. However ...
On a personal, mental-health level: I really don't want to work right now, regardless of the pay, unless I'm doing something that will A) be intellectually/personally fulfilling and B) Further my career beyond just adding another year at the same place to my CV. I'm too old and too tired these days to want to waste any of my life on a job that sucks my time away and makes my soul cry, even if I'm very good at it, even if it's sort of in my career field, even if jobs in this field of any kind are scarce and I'm lucky to be offered one, and even if it's paying me three times what I'd make doing the biological office equipment shit I spent ~15 years doing.
Fact is, I'm no longer a struggling 20something who absolutely has to take any job she's qualified for to pay the bills. I've done that. I did that for a Very Long Time. I feel like I've paid my dues where that's concerned. In the position we're in, money, in and of itself, is simply not enough of a justification for me to do something that wastes my bandwidth and makes me feel like crap. I don't want to retire yet, per se, I just don't want to "work" anymore. I want a capital-C career, not a contract button-monkey job that pays me by the hour, rather than using my unique skills and strengths.
The Bottom Line:
The next phase of my life, in my ideal world, will consist of five things: Kid, writing, singing, friends/family and travel. Anything that doesn't fall into furthering one of those five categories is something I don't want to have to spend time/effort on.
I realize how very lucky I am to even have this choice to make, and I'm grateful to M's brain and the luck of the stock market from 15 years ago that made this happen. But I do have this choice, and I don't like feeling that I'm being selfish or irresponsible if I choose to do what will make me happy over what will fatten our bank account. Money for its own sake doesn't interest me. We have enough of it to have and do the things we want, so long as M keeps working. More of it isn't nearly as necessary to me as feeding my soul. And stuff that will take away my bandwith for singing and writing, without giving me anything in return but a paycheck, is actually starving it instead.
I should probably also mention: I know there are times--quite a lot of them--that M hates working, too. But in his case, he's also doing it for the love of the work itself. He was one of those lucky sorts who found his career calling early, and was a rare enough genius in his field to be able to get a well-paying job when he was very young. He's never even had a day of college, and was a mere pup of 21 when he started working at The Company. He's had bad positions there, and even now, we're fussy because this particular gig is stealing a lot of his time, but in terms of what he actually does for a living, he loves it. Same as I would do if I had the capital-C Career I want, rather than this generic button-pusher crap.