journey

"Happiness is the journey, not the destination."

Sunday, June 8, 2014

True Confessions of a SAHM on the verge of a job interview...

OK, I think it's been established at some point that I've been kind of looking (admittedly perhaps a bit less whole-heartedly than I should) for a job. Just, you know. Life happens, and right now we really need the financial boost. To help with this, my parents took my kids for the summer. My MIL died a couple of weeks ago so DH had to take an entire week with no work -- and thus no pay -- so we could go up there for that, and now he's off to NC for two weeks for Reserve training (again, no pay from his regular job, and no telling if when we get his Reserve pay it will make up for the two weeks of nothing).

I've been stressing over a resume, because really the idea of working at Wal-Mart or a grocery store or some other large-chain retail/fast food job is Too Depressing For Words and I'd be competing with a ton of kids looking for summer jobs in between school years, and... yeah. So. Resume that hopefully makes me look like a competent hire-able adult despite a looooong stretch (nearly a  dozen years!) of No Actual Paycheck.

But it seems to have paid off; I got a call from a Real Estate Agency wanting someone to do clerical/support type stuff. They had me do a personality test on the internet, decided from that to call me in for some skills tests. I'm fairly confident on the math part (although I do not enjoy math) but I'm worried that my typing skills will not cut it. I know they're a little rusty these days. I'm confident that, once I'm using them again regularly, they'll shine right back up, but... well, getting the chance to shine 'em is going to be the hard part. On the plus side, I'm not planning on leaving any time soon (although if they'll send me back to school to learn office-manager-y stuff, I would love that) so that might be a plus. (And, yeah, I'm trying to type this as quickly & mistake-free as I can.)

Anyway, I've been ruminating a bit on things like whether or not, beyond the financial necessity, I actually *want* a job -- more specifically, if I actually want *this* job -- and I think... I think, yeah, I do.

It sounds like it's going to be a challenge, stretch mental muscles I haven't had to use in a long time, and I'll be frank. With few exceptions relating to mostly craft projects (UGH Gifted Program), I haven't had to challenge myself much over the last few years. I mean, not that way. My patience, yes. My voice, MY GOD YES. But my brain? There are the random philosophical questions from DinoBoy and VelcroBoy, but they don't so much challenge me to *think* as they challenge me to try to figure out how to explain these complex ideas to them in fairly simplistic terms, while not completely ruling out for them the idea that there *is* complexity to them that they can continue to discover. If that makes sense.

And keeping house is not challenging. It gets physically challenging when I decided to take on heavy, moving-furniture-and-all-the-things, down-on-my-knees-scrubbing type cleaning, but it's even then still very rote. Plus it's hampered by the fact that I don't CARE, I don't need my house to look like a magazine spread. I need it to look like anyone can walk in, grab a book & a blanket, and settle down on the sofa, and they'll have a cat on their lap and a dog at their feet before the blanket is on and the book is open (they probably won't; my cats are weird about laps). I want my house to look like half a dozen kids can come tromping through with a metric ton of sports equipment, half of which I don't know the name for, and I won't freak out about "Oh My GOD WHAT are you doing to my FLOOR!?" Also, I want my kids to be able to function as adults and know how to clean up various different kinds of messes and as far as I can see, the best way to let them learn that is to let them do it themselves. Which means I have to take a back seat on some stuff and let them take on more and more chores.

It's been disconcerting being just me at home here lately (even when hubby's home, it's for very short periods of time & I haven't actually cooked much because I'm not sure how to cook for anything less than half an army), but having to do All The Things all by myself has just kind of reinforced how much I don't enjoy these things that seem to be part and parcel of the SAHP life.

If -- no, WHEN -- I get this job, I may use some of my earnings to hire someone to come clean for me.

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