This week at work, my shit, and a whole bunch of other people's shit, got handed to me. The particulars are kind of unimportant in the context of this blog, although the end result does have a significant impact on the direction our family may be taking.
My department, my job, which I actually did love doing, and a status quo of almost 8 years were all yanked out from under me with no notice on Thursday. The silver lining is that I was reassigned, and even during the worst economic crisis to hit higher education in the history of Nevada, I'm not taking a pay cut and I've been handed an opportunity to go in a completely new direction in a department where they are glad to have me. I'm lucky, as usual.
In the past few months, I've been doing a lot of professional soul-searching. Really, we knew that something drastic would happen with my job, although we didn't come close to anticipating this as it is. The career trajectory of the International Student Advisor has a narrow, very specific path. It's not like there are a lot of schools in Nevada (education isn't exactly high on the list of priorities here, which is intensely short-sighted and will only make things worse in the long run BUT I DIGRESS). Any change I would make in that field would likely be a lateral move, and it's unlikely that I would progress very much even in the longer term.
But I wasn't ready to quit. We aren't in a position for me to stop working. We have a new house, and although we got a hell of a deal on it, we lead a two-income lifestyle (oh, how fancy we are...). Ava is in a wonderful school, and if I'm not working, we'd cut that back pretty drastically (not entirely) and that would be sub-optimal for her. If I'm suddenly a stay-at-home mom, do we have another kid? I don't know that we're up to that just yet. Rob travels so much for work, it would be so hard to start over with a new baby right now. We need to have some stability, and so we were just in a holding pattern until something definite revealed itself. And that's what happened. A whole shitstorm of revelations came down.
The big picture shows that I'm not completely expendable, which means that the hives and acne (you know what's awesome when you're 38 and the spotlight is shining on you? PIMPLES.) that the stress of not knowing and not having any say in the matter was causing are starting to clear up. Instead of having to decide that it's time for a new direction, one was handed to me, and my resume can only benefit from it.
But my ego took a pretty big hit this week. It's hard not to be insulted. I like to think that Michael Corleone's philosophy of how it's not personal and it's just business is the way to handle stuff like this. But it's very personal. Someone else decided what I get to be when I grow up. That's not an easy pill to swallow (unlike Tylenol PM, which, thank the lord, is SUPER easy). I understand that change is inevitable and that These Things Happen and that BS about the good lord doesn't close a door without opening a window. The lesson thus far has been that in the future, when I grow up and I'm trained in my new job and moving up in the field (oh, we all know I will...), I will remember that even bad news deserves to be delivered with consideration. Mary Poppins said it best: A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. I think it is possible to do what was done this week without making it feel like it felt.
This week was also not an example of me being on my Motherhood A-Game, either. That really bothers me. Rob was on the road, and Ava is 2 and a half, and I had to be a grown-up at work AND at home, and that was hard. It sounds so petty when I think of it like that. I think of when I was a kid and my parents had stuff to deal with. My mom's been gone over 20 years, so she's kind of idealized in my mind. The absolute worst thing that I thought all week was "My mom would have handled this so much better..." and I got lost in that spiral. But I don't know that she would have done any better than I did. I've come to realize that she's probably be just as pissed off as I am and she would do her best just like I am, and that's really all there is too it.
This is kind of rambly, and, well, bloggity (oh, I get it...) but raising a family isn't always about what happens inside the house to everyone in the family all at the same time. This week was probably the toughest week we've had since Ava was born, and it's over and we all survived. From what I can tell, Ava's fine (although she now knows the word "why?" and she LOVES it because she repeats it over and over and COME ON, KID but she probably would have learned that anyway) and no worse for having a sad mom who wasn't up to the super awesome bath and bed routine on Thursday. Rob is, as ever, amazing, and is expertly providing balance to my indignantly unbalanced Scales of Justice In This World. And I'm fine. A door closed, but a window is open (even though that window now has a view of the freaking men's room instead of the Strip TRUE STORY).
1 comment:
Does this mean the AOM stories are ceasing?
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