On the Cusp - Rethinking Work-Life Balance

Truth Thursday

About 11 years ago, I was working at a job where the boss really thought he wanted to offer up a family friendly environment, but in reality, he couldn’t bear to break the traditional office maxims – face time in the office all day, every day, and almost zero flexibility with schedules. I had taken the job for two reasons – to make a move to a more senior position, and to work a more flexible schedule, because in the beginning, that’s what I was offered as an enticement.

The job was a disaster. Not only was it a challenging organization for which to raise money, but I was clearly moving into a different place in balancing my work and family life, and although I had been left to believe that this would be a good place to put those needs into play, it was pretty much a bait and switch. I was on the cusp of needing to be more available for my family, and yet I couldn’t figure out how to do it in this situation. This job suffered the brunt of that discovery process. 

It wound up being a bad fit for both me and the organization. 

I got pregnant with my third child about nine months into my tenure there. I wasn’t terribly happy in my job, but I also was in no position to start looking for a new job with two young kids at home and now another on the way. I fully planned to return after a standard three-month maternity leave (and for those of you who are under the mistaken impression that non-profits, despite lower salaries, offer better benefits, think again. Under my nose, the paid parental leave was lowered from six weeks to two weeks – two weeks!! – while I was pregnant. Appalling.) 

So I began squirreling away as much vacation and sick leave as I possibly could in preparation for a meager paid parental leave. I was nervous that one of my two kids might get sick and I would need to use a precious sick day to stay home. I didn’t want to take any family vacation before the baby came that summer because I didn’t want to lose any time at home. I was penurious with any and all paid leave.

Then about two months before my son was born, a close friend had her third baby, and it was a boy. And as a Jewish boy, there was a bris. And it was being held in the middle of a workday afternoon. 

What to do? 

I decided that I would go to the bris, even though it meant losing almost a half-day of leave (and trying to make my colleagues understand the importance of my going.) I also had to take a taxi to get to the event, as it was far from my office and I couldn’t drive for some reason that day.

I was feeling a bit rushed and guilty and annoyed that anything would eat up my leave time, not to mention cab fare. Then I got into that cab and had the “aha” moment of a lifetime.

All the platitudes of life danced across my head and my heart during that cab ride: Life is short.They grow up so fast. When the day of reckoning comes, you will not be thinking about how you wished you had spent more time in the office. Family and friends first. And so on and so on. In that ordinary cab, I had an extraordinary experience. I fell off the cusp on which I had been tottering for a while and realized what my priorities had to be. 

By the time I reached my friend’s house, I knew that not only had I made the right decision for that afternoon, I had made the decision for how I planned to live my life from that point on. Two months later, my son was born. Three weeks after that, 9/11 became our new reality, and I made the decision in a heartbeat to leave my job and open a consulting practice so that I could work from home. There wasn’t a moment’s hesitation. 

So I worked from home, as my own boss, for ten years.  It wasn’t always easy, and it took me a long time to figure out the rhythm and rhyme of consulting work, but I did, and I enjoyed some of my most outstanding work achievements during this period. I certainly came into my own as a professional and began to enjoy a sense of pride, certitude and self-assuredness about my experience and what I brought to the work table. 

My little boy will be 11 in a few months, and he is going off to middle school in the fall. For the first time in nearly 17 years, I will not be the mother of an infant, pre-schooler or elementary school child. It’s a different world, being the mom of tweens and teens, and I like it.

It also opens up a whole new vista in terms of my work world, and I find myself, once again, on the cusp. 

This time, I am on the cusp of aspiration and ambition. I find myself in a work situation where I want to do more and be more. I have learned how to balance my family life with my work. I have older children who are more self-sufficient, with only 17 short months before the oldest one takes off on his own college adventures.  I don’t doubt that my two younger children still need me – for moral support, for rides to soccer practice and bat mitzvah training, and just to be a general safeguarding presence in the home – but they are also old enough to fend for themselves a couple of hours a day, and to be responsible for things like homework and housework without me hanging over their heads. 

This shift leads me to think about what I will do come the next school year. 

Do I try to take on more work and responsibility? Do I look for a deeper and more committed role for myself in my work world? Do I work full-plus days, full weeks, more than I have for quite a while, like I did when I was young and hungry and trying to figure it all out? 

There is a part of me that is panting to be back in the center of the action again.

And then there is a part of me that looks up and thinks – what on earth am I thinking? 

In addition to still taking care of my family’s daily needs, I also still want to write, which I believe is my true calling. How can I possible write my memoir, my novel, even this blog, if I bank that much more psychic energy into work? Can I balance my family’s needs with this burgeoning desire to be more relevant at work?  Will we ever eat dinner together again? 

And yet. 

Years and years ago, another mom in my neighborhood who had three young children, sidled up to me at the playground and gleefully whispered, “this is the secret, isn’t it!?” She was referring to what she thought I shared with her, the joy of being a stay-at-home-mom of three kids. I just smiled and didn’t disabuse her of her assumption. But I knew then, as I know today, that being a stay-at-home mom was never the right choice for me. 

For many years, I have been living with one set of choices, and they HAVE been the right choices for me. As I now look off the side of yet another cliff, and verge on the cusp of taking another professional leap, I wonder about my next set of choices, and whether they will continue to guide me on the right path in this one wild, precious, wondrous, spectacular life I get to lead. 

Stay tuned.

 

With thanks to poet Mary Oliver, The Summer Day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Stacy]

Karen, as always, WOW! You have made so many good choices for yourself and your family, and I know you will continue to make them. It is nice knowing, I think, that there's always new things coming down the path the opportunity you have - whatever it is - to try them out in this transitional time for you.