ever deeper

No posts for two months -- a big no-no for the committed blogger! I don't care. I wasn't entirely sure why I got into this in the first place; although having a lot of time on my hands and a penchant for writing helped. However, keeping a diary in the public domain goes against my introverted nature as well as my better judgment. That’s probably why, even though I had the time, I did not have the inclination and have not posted regularly enough. Oh, well – I’ve got more to say. It’ll come when it comes.

I'm married and have two kids, a dog and a house. My wife stayed home for many years, mainly for our kids' sake; we agreed that she would take on most of the home-related duties like cooking, bills, and taking care of the kids and that I would go to a job every day and bring home money. It's been tough financially, but whenever we revisit the decision it always works out that we would rather have her home with the kids than have a couple of extra bucks and less time or energy to enjoy it.

However, my long term vision has always included encouraging her to go back to school to get her Master's degree. We waited until the kids were both old enough to be in school so it was less of a scheduling burden. When she finished her first year she thought it would be a good idea to get a part-time job as well and start contributing to the family finances.

Unfortunately, I was unemployed for five months. An interesting experience; staying home every day after working almost every day for many years is weird. When you are on vacation, your time is limited; you get an urgent feeling to spend your time off wisely because soon it will end. When I was unemployed I had an urgent feeling that I needed to spend my time wisely, but in order to become re-employed as soon as possible. I found myself needing to spend almost as much time dealing with the consequences of unemployment as I did working. However, that eventually ended and it became frustrating and boring to not have a destination and a goal every day, with new problems coming up regularly to face and overcome. The ongoing challenge while unemployedwas to survive and find work, but there was only so much I could do on a daily basis toward that end.

So (long story made excruciating), for the last few months, she has been working her butt off and I have been home instead. I took over some of the home-life duties, but kind of grudgingly; since school and part-time work don't pay the bills, I couldn't embrace the Mr. Mom role as fully as I would if she and I were willingly switching places. We have talked about whether or not that would ever happen; she thinks it's a good idea, when she is able to bring in enough money to support the family, that I would then get a chance to stay home, work part-time (maybe), and go back to school myself if that's what I wanted.

I think I'd like that! My recent stint at home sucked in a lot of ways, but mainly because I didn't want to let my family down, and we didn't have a lot of alternatives. The financial repercussions of this will be hard to overcome, even now that I'm employed again. However, it did give me some more time with the kids, and some time to think about stuff. I was able to support my wife in her school and work efforts when she needed it, and I was able to volunteer for the boys' school a lot more than usual. I coached my older son's soccer team and was able to focus on it a lot more than I would have been able to otherwise. I liked being home, I just didn’t like not having any money!