August 1, 2012
The moments that rejuvenate our souls are far too limited.
Time for discovery, rest, memory creation and enjoyment is restricted. For us, only the weekends and only those few weekends when we’re not traveling for work, for other people, for something else, or full up with chores and every other necessary fact of life, are “free”.
I knew I’d gone stale but it wasn’t until we came back from Comic Con and I felt the tiniest trickle of creative energy coming back, my brain energized and stimulated from steeping in the sheer power of so many creators, artists, writers and thinkers despite my overwhelming fatigue that it felt like any little bit would make a difference.
The problem was clear, but the solution wasn’t so much, especially when even the effort to do fun things felt like too much.
Still, it didn’t seem like the worst idea to venture across our thresholds to taste a bit of the world. While I meditate on my next big steps, getting out and living real life makes a difference.
We were horrified to see this machine eating up the walls of our long time grocery store … it turns out they’re making way for a bigger and better version of it.
The lack of good affordable sushi in my life here has felt like sensory deprivation. There’s a place in Southern California that I used to frequent with a good friend where we’d fill up on some of the freshest fish for about $20. Fish for the frugal soul, I tell you!
This was the first reasonably priced, good quality combination fish sashimi plate we’ve found in the area. Score!
There’s something so soul-warming about an amazing bowl of ramen. I could say nearly the same thing about a mediocre bowl of ramen, really. Ramen is such a childhood staple, it nearly doesn’t matter how good it is.
Measuring about 12 inches across, the Super Shoyu Ramen bowl would loom over your shoulder if it weren’t in a bowl. Full of yummy noodley goodness, I’d still go with a mini super shoyu next time for sanity’s sake. This took two of us to finish.
It starts to feel more possible to find one’s center with a full belly and sun-warmed toes.
July 30, 2012
A sensible, interesting, sciencey-businessy, working-mom blogger I admire, Cloud of Wandering Scientist, was gracious enough to take the time to write a guest post. I couldn’t precisely remember what I asked her to focus on, but it must have been along the lines of what I’d ask anyone I like: Tell me more. Tell me more about your journey. *props head up on hands* How did you get here and how and why did you make the decisions you did? I am interested to hear.
One of the many things I enjoy reading in Cloud’s writings are her reasons. Her opinions are great too, whether or not I agree with them is irrelevant, but I enjoy hearing how people think. I love this post. I think you will too. (She’ll also be swinging by after work to answer comments.)
I write a lot about being a mother in the workforce on my blog, usually from the viewpoint of “Hey! This does not suck anywhere near as much as those people tell you it does!” Revanche saw one of the posts awhile back, and asked me if I’d do a guest post on the topic. I said yes, and then promptly got buried in various work and family needs, and it is now at least a month later than I told Revanche I might be able to deliver a post.
And that, right there, is one of my lessons for being a happy mother in the workforce: there isn’t a lot of time left after work and family claim their shares, so be careful what other commitments you make. You can’t always predict when work and/or family are going to need more than their usual amount of attention.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before I start giving out advice, I should tell you a little about myself, so that you can decide whether or not you think anything I say is at all relevant to you and your life. I am 40 years old, married, with two daughters, aged 5 and 2.5. I also have a PhD in a field that combines biology and physical sciences. I did things the boring way, going to graduate school straight after I finished college. After I finished graduate school, I went to work in the biotechnology industry, and have mostly stayed there. My work has always been a combination of science and computers, and over the years has also involved an increasing amount of management. In my current position, I lead a group of 4 other fulltime employees and a revolving cast of ~10 contractors. I also manage all of our projects. We are responsible for the scientific databases and associated software at a medium-sized biotech company. In short, I have the sort of “demanding career” that you so often hear is incompatible with motherhood- and to make matters worse, I’m ambitious, and intend to go higher still in my career, albeit not necessarily right at this instant.
I was working as a contractor when my first child was born, and was able cut my hours to 35 per week for several months (with an accompanying cut in pay). But that job was evolving away from the work that I find most interesting, so I gave up my reduced hours and found a job at a biotech company, where I worked 40-45 hours per week. That company underwent downsizing about a year and a half ago, and I was laid off. After a few months of unemployment, I landed in the job I have now, where I still work 40-45 hours week. In many ways, this job is a step up from the previous one- I make more money and have more responsibility and power. And the previous job was a step up from the contractor position, since it gave me my first opportunity to directly run a group rather than just projects. More importantly to me, though, each job has continued to expand my knowledge and skills, which I believe will set me up for more career growth in the future.
So, now, on to the advice. I think the best thing to do is to tell you what I think I did right, where I think I got lucky, and what mindsets I think help me stay happy despite the fact that there are clearly aspects of my life that are made unnecessarily hard by our culture.
Things I Think I Did Right
Figured out how to be super productive in a 40ish hour work week before I had kids. This is huge. I get as much done in my 40-45 hour work week as a lot of people do in 50-55 hours. And the fact that I had a reputation for this before I had kids has probably contributed to the fact that no one thinks I’m scaling back now that the kids are here. I have an old post on my blog about when I discovered my work limit and figured out that I didn’t need to work crazy long hours. Married a man who is a true partner. Oh, we still squabble about chores occasionally, but that happens from a base assumption of equality, and that we’re both equally responsible for chores and parenting.
We bought a smaller, more centrally located house rather than a larger house in the outer suburbs, which cuts down the time we spend commuting.
Worked hard and developed a reputation for being a valuable employee before I got pregnant- this made it easier to negotiate the maternity leave I wanted (I took three months off, and worked 3 days a week for the fourth month) and other accommodations (I work a slightly shifted schedule).
Points on which I Got Lucky
My husband and I work in the same part of town, which makes it easier to share drop off and pick up duties. Unless I change jobs, this will change in about a year, since my company is moving, and I can already see that it will complicate logistics, at least until my youngest child is out of day care.
My parents are retired, and my mother is willing to fly over and provide back up child care when someone gets sick.
My chosen career works well with the pattern of putting in a little extra time after the kids are in bed
Mindsets for Happiness
I compare my current situation to real alternatives, not idealized impossibilities.
I don’t allow the media-fueled “mommy wars” to drag me into feeling guilty. I spend plenty of time with my kids, and I put plenty of effort into my career.
But wait! you say. You’ve heard that you can’t “have it all.” You’ve heard that combining career and motherhood is exhausting. You’ve heard that having kids will stall out your career.
Well, to all of that I say “maybe”. And to beware of people who are sloppy in assigning cause. Do I “have it all”? I don’t know, it depends on your definition of “it all.” I have what I want, for the most part. Am I tired sometimes? Hell, yes. I’m tired A LOT of the time. But when I look at why I’m tired, it is because my 2 year old likes to come join us in bed at 2 a.m. and my 5 year old has been waking up before 6 a.m. these days. It is because right now, both of my kids are in a phase where they want mommy all of the time. I don’t see how quitting my job would fix either of those things- in fact, it would make the second one more likely to drive me to distraction. I also wouldn’t trade my daughters for more sleep, so I figure this is an instance where I put up with something slightly suboptimal in my life because the beauty of the larger picture makes up for this little flaw. Has my career stalled out? Hell, no. I am not on some meteoric ride to the top- but I wouldn’t be on such a ride without kids, either. The fact of the matter is that the step from middle management (where I am now) to upper management (where I plan to be someday) takes time, regardless of what else is going on in your life. There are only so many positions at the top. Don’t be fooled by looking at high profile examples like Yahoo and Facebook into thinking that there are a bunch of bright young things running corporations these days. Even at start ups, experience counts, and the only way to get experience is to put in the time. This can look and feel like a slow down in your career progression, but I am not convinced that it really is.
So, if you’re in your 20s or 30s, looking ahead to your future, and worrying about combining parenthood with careers, my number one piece of advice is to stop worrying. Do what you want to do right now. If you care about having a career, chase your career. If you later have kids and decide you want to stay home with them, or drop back to part time, or whatever- you can do it then. Since you will have been living the life you wanted up until that point, you’ll have no regrets, right? If you later have kids and decide you want to keep working, you’ll be set up to do that. Having a strong career makes that easier, because you are better set up to negotiate for the accommodations you want and because having money means that you can “buy time.”
Trust yourself. You’re smart, and you’ll have a partner who views you as a true equal (because why would you marry someone who doesn’t?) so you’ll be able to figure out solutions to the logistical issues that will inevitably come up. Don’t believe the people who tell you that all working mothers are stressed out and miserable, and that it is “impossible” to do X, Y, or Z with kids. I’m really happy, and so are a lot of my friends. I’ve watched people combine a lot of different things with motherhood: demanding careers, serious hobbies, amazing international travel… With a little luck, some thoughtful choices, and the right mindset, you can have as much of “it all” as you are likely to want. The key is to figure out what you really want, and not let our cultural insecurity about motherhood scare you away from even trying.
July 17, 2012
By the by, rather belatedly, I should note that if you haven’t noticed, we’ve been under construction hereabouts.
The wonderful @cthulhuchick has helped me move this blog from its old home at Blogger and the old URL at www.agaishanlife.blogspot.com to self-hosted WordPress and a brandspankin’ new URL: www.agaishanlife.com.
If I’m on your blogroll, I would greatly appreciate it if you’d be so kind as to update it. The transition wasn’t totally seamless, of course, and some people noticed a few oddities on the morning of, for which I apologize but by and large it was incredibly smooth for a transition that could have been rough’n’tumble.
If you notice anything else that is strange and remains unfixed, do feel free to drop a line here and let me know!
July 16, 2012
Glory be – the water company has finally launched a (gasp) website!!
We can view or pay our bills online by check or credit card, in real-time (!) though they may charge a fee for the privilege of paying the bill. They’re seriously considering charging for the privilege of AutoPay!
They’ve taken so long to implement these electronic services that they have managed to get on the carousel right when the rest of the world is starting to take a step backward to a time where using credit cards may cost money.
I was most displeased to read this article in the Wall Street Journal where, as a result of this settlement, merchants are now allowed to charge customers who use credit cards more as an offset to the interchange fees imposed by Visa and Mastercard. (Discover and American Express charge as well but weren’t part of the suit.)
Whether they will actually charge more remains to be seen – smaller merchants represented say they won’t lead the price increases, likely because they don’t want to anger their customers but I know some merchants already do offer tiered pricing with discounts for their cash customers and that’s probably the model that will continue.
That’s a huge pain, I hate carrying cash but if cards will cost more than I’m simply going to change how I pay for things.
In other news, we’ve closed one of PiC’s accounts with a credit union where they were charging him $8 a month for paperless statements. Unbelievable temerity. It saves paper, time and cost, and yet they’re charging serious money per month. Thank you and we’ll be taking our business elsewhere.
July 1, 2012
June was not a good month for us, cars and getting in trouble via our cars.
Generally, I only talk about me and peripherally PiC here because we haven’t really ironed out the ground rules about what’s ok to share here. But this is one of those best (worst) two out of three sorts of things where we were together for most of them so I think it falls under the “us” category.
1. Out of towner: The car was reparked on the wrong side of the street for less than five minutes so that we could, separately, pay the hotel bill and walk the dog right before loading up and leaving the city after a weekend trip. Parking ticket: $50.
2. Taking the usual route: Busted going around 50 in a 34 MPH zone. What is a 34 MPH zone? Speeding ticket: $XX + Traffic School.**
3. Counter-intuitive Parking Structures: Forgot to pay for parking which you pay once you’ve parked and gotten into the station, right before you go running to get on public transit. Gah. It’s so easy to forget because it requires me to turn the opposite direction I’m going in to find the pay station for the parking booth. It’s even worse when you don’t use the station frequently. $6.50 for him to go back to pay the parking fee but the train was so delayed that it was a futile effort and had to give up. Somehow, didn’t get ticketed.
**I don’t really recall the stories or rules of how traffic school works precisely, whether you pay a whopping couple of hundred dollars and a full soul-sapping day for the school to avoid a point against your license or whether it’s down to a few hours and a lot more money. But at least traffic school is an option against a fat fee, a point against the record and a long-term insurance hike.
June 23, 2012
Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article in the Atlantic, Why Women Still Can’t Have It All, comes at a poignant time for me. Warning: long read.
I mentioned that I’m struggling with some increased stresses in life, mainly to do with work, and it’s got my health in the tank. Or my health was in a death spiral and the stress means I can’t pull up out of it. Chicken, egg.
In any case. Slaughter argues that even she eventually, to her surprise, found herself making the choice to give up the high-powered government position to go back to (let’s point out still highly placed) job to be with her family because the juggle, despite the full support of her academic husband, wasn’t sufficient for their needs, in her estimation. So she can’t imagine how, short of being truly superwomen, women would be able maintain powerful positions and families and whatever else they wanted.
I felt a twinge: why does this argument have to be gender specific? Do not men also suffer sacrifices or the loss of being with their families when they’re off pursuing high-powered careers?
Not a few months, my feminist soul would have risen up out of my body in extra-normal outrage at the suggestion women couldn’t have what we wanted. But realistically? I don’t always think everyone and anyone can have this “everything” business if it actually assumes that everything means everything. I think it’s highly unusual for any single person to have a “whole” package unless they are hideously wealthy and genuinely blessed.
On the other hand, “everything” is bandied about very cavalierly as though we all want the same generic packages. Some of us are happy with messy homes, a pack of half mad pets and decent jobs that make us money whilst others need picture perfect roosts, don’t care about the job thing and whatever other combination of pieces and still others, well, just add water.
I did appreciate the fact that she went on to reframe the discussion to view the problem from the sociocultural standpoint: the fact that the (American) workplace isn’t family-friendly, that we don’t respect family or simply life outside of work. That our usual current business practice is the assumption that employees who are childless may be more reliable than (typically newer) parents, but that’s got to be recognized as a red herring. That in our political arena, the euphemism for being fired is to “spend time with the family”, and that is a demonstration of how devalued is the coin of the role of the family.
I always knew when I was in the wrong workplace when it came to these matters, even though I had no intention of becoming a mother any time soon. When employers pried about my plans to have kids, it was really easy to tell when they were simply making conversation or trying to determine whether I was a maternity risk; and their attitudes about performance and merit were equally shoddy.
My truly personal twinges are that I’m already feeling the pains of limitations. We haven’t yet made the decision about whether or not to have a family, and I had far greater ambitions for my career than where I am now. And yet, at this stage, just reaching into what might be called senior management, I find myself burning out.
My health is refusing to cooperate with any grand plans to be a high powered anything.
There are aspects of my job that I do really well and quite enjoy, but the new stresses of the growing pains haven’t settled yet. And even newer stresses that may or may not be permanent changes were recently piled on unexpectedly that ate up all my happy life balance, eating into any ability to take care of myself at a time I desperately need it most.
For all that I work to protect my staff and fight for their work-life balance, their salaries, their promotions, and I win, dammit, I have no shelter of my own in the face of adversity at the moment. And that lack is wearing on me.
I’ve accomplished a few things, in my time here. But it’s just a handful of things. Educated a few people a bit, brought some people up a few ladders, sent some to their next dream. But have I made a difference yet? I really don’t think so.
I find myself wondering: for so many years, I climbed and leapt the ladders and toiled for experience to rise to this level. It feels like I have achieved next to nothing, compared to where I’d really like to be. And now? Will I have to give up now? So far from having accomplished something real?
Is this it for me?
I’m not sure which targets I want to hit in life precisely.
To help. To make a difference. To secure freedom, security. To educate. To improve. To leave things better than I found them. To achieve. To “wear the white hat” if I can quote “Scandal.” To be happy. To live a good and true life. Maybe to have a family, which I would then need to support.
It doesn’t have to be at this job that I do most of those things. I do need to make a living somehow. But right now, it’s feeling like I’m going to be lucky if I can walk to the grocery store most days of the week. And that’s not particularly conducive to having anything at all, much less having it. And All.
—
Cloud of Wandering Scientist has a great discussion going on this very topic.
June 13, 2012
With every successive job, the people I work with drink more than the last group.
Socially, generally.
Some, sportingly.
A few, competitively.
I long ago realized I was never going to evolve some genetic mutation that would enhance my alcohol tolerance. Since I never much cared what people thought, I generally order my favorite non alcoholic bevvy when out with friends. I’ll try a glass of wine on the company dime if I’m feeling experimental (if I pick badly, the wine tastes like regret) and call it a night. After two, I’d call it a night in the middle of the day.
But this week has been a week to end all weeks in drinking. Alcohol has happened every single day for business reasons, and I’m grateful that this isn’t my chosen vice. This could add up to some real money if I had a tipple of something every night.
Wine country: some tastings free, a bottle of wine to share: $30
Glass of wine: $10
Glass of sparkling wine: $5 (thanks, Happy Hour)
Cocktail: $13
That’s all before tax and tip, so we’re horking up nearly $70 on beverages mostly for one alone. Then again, I’ve watched those professional drinkers knock back a bottle and a half of wine each so I might be wildly underestimating a normal person’s drinking habits and expenses.
I took PiC out for a really nice dinner for that, and we could have done it on half if it weren’t a restaurant on the Embarcadero.
I’m not saying drinking is bad and therefore choosing to spend on drink is bad, mind. I choose to spend on other things, like ceviche, french fries and oysters, when I do splash out rather than drinking because it’s not something I enjoy nearly as much as food.. Or books.. Or having a few really nice things or trips or money in the bank.
I’d just never done the math on a drinking tab before. And lots of people I know very much enjoy sitting over a few glasses and whining their hearts out. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I sure am glad I can be happy with one drink, and don’t care when someone teases me for “not keeping up”.
Is it your norm to go out for drinks with friends or colleagues when you want to catch up or unwind?
Has it ever been or become a financial issue or does something/anything else get cut first?