Job

About two weeks ago I applied for a job at Loyola that looked interesting as a part-time education policy data analyst. I couldn't believe my luck when I saw it (I checked the jobs site after fantasizing about getting a theology degree at Loyola). Anyhow, I brushed up the resume, sent it in, got a call a week later, interviewed last week, got the job on Monday and then had to decide whether I wanted it.

This job was similar in many ways to my old jobs doing number crunching (first job was data work for education policy, second job was data work for direct marketing). At my second job, I did number crunching to eventually come up with an equation which would predict likelihood of being a customer. Example:
(Age 25-35)w + (0-2 kids)x + (income 50K-100K)y + (customer at other small home goods stores)z = likelihood of being a customer at Pottery Barn

I'm kind of out of practice, but you get the idea.

I had to call up managers at my previous two jobs to ask them to be references to me. The one manager, a 60-year old woman with no children and no close family whose life was dedicated to her career told me I was very wise to go back to work so I'm not out of it so long. My other manager, the 30-something dad of 5 whose wife home schools them all wondered what I was doing going back to work with "all those little kids at home." In fact, I got mixed reactions from a lot of people, muddling up my decision. I started to realize that I really had to determine what it was that would make ME the happiest person and the best mom.

My mom gave me the idea to make a list of pros and cons. I started to do that. Here it is:

o. money (a wash in this case, as it would have paid for childcare with almost nothing left over)
-. juggling work and home (I am not very good at multitasking)
-. missing the kids (I would especially miss out on mornings with Ellie alone, something I had really looked forward to)
-. added chaos from having more going on and less time to do it all (not good for the old anxiety)
+. break from the kids (yes, please!)
+. identity outside of the family (badly needed)
+. career direction (ditto)

I think it's important to note here that there is no such thing the perfect situation when deciding to do the stay-at-home thing or the work thing. As it is, I stay at home and am around my kids all the time. So, I get annoyed by them easier and take them for granted more and let them watch too much TV and don't always do very productive things with them. Working moms mention working mom guilt, but I think there is also stay-at-home mom guilt. That shameful feeling of wanting to punt your kids every so often b/c you've had enough of them.

Back to the list of pros and cons. As you can see from the above list, the first factor is even (no money made), the next three were negatives for going back to work, and the next three were positives for going back to work. But, they are not all evenly weighted for me. This was becoming a mathematical equation of the sort that I used to do for work! Each variable has a weight, and sometimes there are one or two variables that carry almost all of the weight. This exercise helped me to determine that the negatives for me were weighted slightly higher than the positives. After a lot of thought, I turned down the job. In the end, I do think that is going to make ME a happier person and happier mom.

Time will tell if this was the right decision. At least two good things have come out of this I know:
1. I discovered that if I want to, I CAN get a job. Hooray.
2. I discovered that each person can have her own equation for a problem, and it is wrong to determine the answer to someone else's problem using your own equation. Whether that's for working or staying at home, or something altogether different.

And that's my deep thoughts for the day...