After a VERY stressful week last week trying to juggle work (full-time for the first time since Mac was born), a child and life without Jimmy, I was ready to go to Bull Street. If you're not from South Carolina, that reference will mean nothing to you, but Bull Street is where the state psychiatric hospital is (or at least was). In short, I felt like my child was getting shortchanged and I came to the hard realization that he needed a parent more than I needed a job.
Last Thursday night I couldn't sleep and wrote a resignation letter. Jimmy noticed I was online at 2am and talked me off the ledge from afar. He's good for that from afar and aclose!
After a lot of soul-searching and prayer over the weekend, I decided to see if I could go part-time (up to full-time as necessary for travel and post-travel work). I sent the email to my boss in DC on Monday explaining everything to him (I've worked for him before and he is a reasonable guy), but he was away until today. I did get an email yesterday from him saying that he would call when he was back in the office. Which turned out to be today.
So we talked this afternoon and he said since I'm hired as a contractor, I can't go part-time but that he'll hire me for short-term gigs as they come up. We'll see if they come up. He assured me there were no hard feelings on his end and that he understood family had to come first especially in this situation.
I definitely feel like the monkey is off my back, but I also feel a huge sense of failure because I just gave up what had the potential to be the best and most interesting job I've had since I started working and maybe I should have been able to do it "all".
Next time I'll have to order a bigger-sized Superwoman cape.
4 comments:
Families involve a lot of compromise and sometimes it is really hard. I am so happy you had the courage to do what you felt was best for you and your family. Way to go!!!
Mac is only little once and hopefully Jimmy will only be away from you all like this once. I think you did the right thing. Guess this means you won't be in DC next week!
Oh, Susan. i can relate to this struggle. You totally did the right thing...we will all have many, many opportunities for incredible careers (and maybe multiple careers), but we really only have one shot with our kids (well, you know what I mean...especially when they are young). You'll never regret this decision, but you might regret it overtime if you stayed doing a job that you loved (but left you feeling very stressed and as if you were compromising your family). I believe that we can have it all...sometimes just not all at once!
Hi Susan, I´m sure it was a tough call! I´m so glad you did the right thing! No success at work is worth a failure at home!
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