Get a job, woman

Not sure how much longer hubs can be the only one working for the man. 

Or woman. 

Or sock monkey.

Today, like too many days, I drank coffee in order to a fill a hole where sleep should go. This left me jittery and even more spastically talkative than usual.  I went to a gathering of some neighborhood moms, and over the course of a half an hour, I overheard that another mom there was a lawyer who is now staying at home with her child. I proceeded to think she was someone I'd already met (she wasn't). I then immediately segued into proposing we set up shop together as contract attorneys, deftly using our legal skills and our maternal gifts as time-management geniuses to make bucks while raising the youngin's.  Since she had resigned not three months prior, and her child is five months old, she rightfully backed away slowly as I let my caffeine-haze pummel her with my misplaced enthusiasm.  Besides just tired and socially-awkward, though, I am always secretly hoping that if I keep my feelers out, the universe will sweep in and pull me in the career path I was destined for.  Alas.  This time, it may end in a restraining order instead.

Is 2013 the year of the job for me? It goes without saying that being a stay at home mom is work.  But, in case it needed saying: it is work.  Lots of work.  Bottomless fount of über-repetitive, cyclical rather than linear work, with tons, and tons, of bodily-fluid clean up involved.  By "job" I mean to refer to something that fits into the capitalist framework of fee-for-service.

I won't get into the ways in which I am challenged being home with the kids.  Because that's a sort of never-ending side track for me.  Suffice it to say, I'm challenged in ways I'd never encountered; in ways that have nothing to do with intellect, adult social interactions or validation. But there is one aspect of it all that is a bit of a crutch to me is that I have long-harbored the fear that I could never really be employed long-term.  So, being a stay at home mom has stoked that fear, keeping me out of the career loop as I hear about my friends and former classmates climbing the ranks, while my resume rots and my meager skills evaporate.  I wouldn't go back and change a thing.  But it is a nagging and dark place in my thoughts, this whole job thing.

So, then, why go to law school?  I honestly don't know.  But I don't think many fully know why we do what we do.  I think we backwards rationalize our decisions to give ourselves a satisfactory narrative.  I mean, I like the content of a legal education.  So I guess that's why I did it in part.  And that being a lawyer meant that working for "justice" in some grand sense was possible.  But I did not ever have a concrete sense of what kind job I saw myself in.  What I do know is that I am very decisive.  I don't him and haw. I do.  This is not to say I am always (or ever) pleased with my decisions, from what to order in a restaurant to what house to buy, but, dang it, I fill in that circle on life's Scantron sheet and I turn the page.  And therefore, I applied. I attended. I got my JD. But when it comes to committing to gainful employment, I am running scared.

My fear is that I could never stay put in one job long term.  I've been employed in some capacity or another since I was 15.  Since 12 if you count baby sitting jobs. (Yes, people let me babysit at the age of 12. And in turn they got a super-enthusiastic sitter who - armed with a precocious sense of responsibility as well as a comprehensive knowledge of childcare based on the informational series The Babysitters Club -  arrived with lesson plans and games in exchange for sweatshop wages.  In sharp contrast to 17 year old baby sitting me, who let your kids run amok, and got them in bed as soon as possible so I could talk on your phone, eat your snacks, and watch your glorious cable television.) I have always doubted my own stick-to-itiveness when it comes to a real grown-up job. I'm 31 now, and between a lot of years of school and these past three at home with the kids, I've certainly not proven myself wrong yet.

Right now, Eli is six months old.  Edie is a few weeks away from being three years old.  Though I'm in the thick of it with little Eli, Edie is on her way to being a full time school-er.  And while he's six months now, this baby time is so so fleeting.  Not just in a wistful, 'where do the days go?' way.  Also in a temporal sense that is making me ponder my next move.

On any given day, I have an entirely different sense of what I want to be when I grow up.  I want to be a lactation consultant.  I want to open my own practice for family law.  I want to get back into public interest, working for equality, providing access to legal services to the under-served. Maybe I want to homeschool my kids.  And, I want to do none of that but instead focus on writing and blogging and somehow turn that into a career.  I do wonder whether I will ever be able to pull the trigger here.

My husband and I, we want to retire one day.  And one day, his sad old little car will die and he will need a replacement - at a minimum a sound mule or a pair of roller blades - to get to work.  These things, among others, depend in part on me getting a job.  I also know that I want to work outside my home, to be challenged in ways that involve little-to-no bodily fluids.  And I know that this is no small goal, given the sad state of the economy and sadder state of my skillset. 

It's too scary to commit to 2013 being my job year.  I'm not there yet.  But I do want to take some steps, mental or tangible.  Because it's getting to that point.  And I think if I try to take another bar exam to put this off much further, I may get arrested for fraud.  Three is enough, Rach.  Saddle up.