In limbo

I have hesitated to write about this and I am really not sure why.  Typically I am a person that is fairly in control.  I do not break down, I do not let things make me go crazy, but over the past few months that changed over something.   Since Audrey was born I have gone back and forth with staying home or working.  I admit that I do enjoy the financial perks of working full time, especially having my summers off.  It is awesome.  But at the same point, it is hard on our family and it is hard on me.  I often questioned with it was truly right that I work full time when technically we could afford for me to stay home.  I guess that is a common thought process for many women.  One of the issues with my profession is that I do not just go to work and come home.  I go to work, come home, take care of dinner and the girls, etc, then go back to work on my laptop until around 10pm.   Yes that is right, keep that in mind of you are a person who thinks teachers are not paid enough!!  Some stay up later.  Oh and I should note that doing all that does not bring me ahead, nope, it brings me just close to staying up with everything.  One of the hard parts of all this too is that I do like teaching and I do like getting out of the house and doing things.

So last November when I returned to work it was with very mixed feelings.  I struggled and I stated about a month later that I should never have gone back, I was sure that I was done at the end of the school year.  Then that came and nothing felt right at all.  This decision consumed me.  I decided to put some effort into finding a part time job.  I looked all summer I went on an interview at the beginning of the summer and nothing came of that.  Then at the end of the summer, a week before our vacation, I applied on a whim for another job.   I was called in for the interview and to be honest I knew after the interview that I likely had the job.  I do not know why, I just knew (did not share that really with many people at the time).  So that caused a panic for me.  They did a phone interview with me while I was at the beach and then over a week later I was officially offered the job.  There is drama behind the taking of this job, but bottom line is, I took the job.  There are some complications involved, one being that until Celia starts school I will basically earn little to no money but we should not lose money!  I will work 2 days a week and one Friday a month.  I will work 5 weeks in the summer, but only 2 days a week so I guess in the scheme of things not horrible.  I will get to spend more time with my girls and hopefully start to tame the chaos in my house (organize, do some home projects, etc).  Celia will continue to go 3 full days to her school to keep up with the Pre-k experience.

One of the things I look forward to is not feeling rushed.  In the summer I feel like everything needs to be done.  I need to do things around the house, take the girls places, etc.  Now things are stretched out not compacted to just the summer.  I do not think that life will be less stressful in the beginning but that might be an end result too!!

I like what I do right now and I think that I have been a very good teacher but I do not know if I would continue to be a very good teacher if I stay for a few more years.  I realized in all this that I needed a change.    In this climate right now though, giving up a teaching job really does mean you are giving up your career.  Things may change but it is hard to find a job.  So I am hoping that by keeping up through part time work that when I am ready to return I will still be "marketable".

So why am I am limbo??  Well you know how in most places you have to give a 2 week notice??  Well in schools it is 60 days.  Yep, 2 months.  So I am staying at my current job until possibly Oct 30th, but hopefully earlier!!   I still can not really believe that I will be leaving.  I do not do these things, these type of changes are not like me.  But I think that in the end it is really worth trying!