Here I Go Again - Part II (an unintended sequel)

I love the questions my aunt asks me. She often asks me the same question multiple times so I have the chance to mull over and revise my answers.

My aunt is convinced I should have been a teacher. While that profession has its merits, I'm not entirely sure it would have been a good fit for me. I know who I was, how I managed my daycare family and how often I fell short of my own expectations as a daycare provider. I know how I felt when I worked within the offices of the school system. I don't regret not becoming a teacher. Teachers have my respect and admiration for the work they do but I don't believe I could have become the teacher I would have wanted to be.

If I had chosen a career path to follow directly out of high school, I have a strong feeling I would have become an accountant. I'm a number person and derive great satisfaction from the perfection one can attain in the numbers field. That very quality is almost bringing me to my knees at the moment. I am so very grateful I didn't become an accountant.

I have always aimed for 100% whenever possible. This quality made me the perfect candidate for the career path I fell into. I worked in the banking industry for 20 years. It was a good run. It was a good mix of human interaction and numbers. I gained a lot of satisfaction from the job I did, simply by treating people the way I would want to be treated and "balancing to zero" at the end of the day.

Good things often seem to morph into not-quite-as-good as time goes on. As long as the focus was on excellent customer service, attention to detail, the ability to work on my own and as part of the whole, I was in my element. It was when sales targets, marketing goals, referrals and always striving to bring in more new money superseded what I liked about the job, when my desire to look elsewhere for a pay cheque took over.

It was in and around this time when my focus became "family" and I opened my daycare.

My daycare days were subsidized by working at the bank on Saturdays, followed by taking on a bookkeeping job I could squeeze into my work week. There were several tweeks and adjustments to this mixture of income sources but there always seemed to be a mixture of numbers plus human interaction which turned out to be a very good balance of what I did best. Add a little writing into that formula and life was pretty good.

Numbers plus people plus creativity plus family and friends defines "contentment" for me. The balance of this mixture has ebbed and flowed over the course of time. I'm struggling with that very balance right now.

Ten hour daycare days were long and hard. 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. were my hours. But I was at home, I started early and my work day was done by supper time. It was hard but it was manageable. I could have a life after supper if I so chose.

I still have ten hour days. I leave the house at 9:15 and (if I don't have any pit stops to make on my way home) I am home by 7:15. Supper has gone the way of the dinosaurs around here. I come home and I am spent. Trying to hold up my end of the conversation after a day away from home is akin to drunk driving.

I am spent. I feel mentally impaired. I'm good for nothing at the end of my day.

My balance is out of whack. I cannot find my footing in my numbers job. I am mentally fatigued by the conversations I have throughout my day. Attempting to have a social life is a chore. I am grateful for a family who knows me well and has adapted to life as I am living it.

Our home is my oasis, my source of comfort and strength. I know very little right now but I do know I want to find a way to make our home work for me again. I look at our freshly renovated main floor, recognize my weaknesses in the area of tolerance and I know re-opening my daycare is not an option. I do know I want to earn a living from home.

I've been here before.

I was some version of "here" when I decided to take a leave of absence from a stable and secure job with benefits to open my daycare.

I felt this way before I decided to go back to school for a year after 11 years of daycaring, so I could pursue a job in the bookkeeping field.

When rerouting my career didn't work (after several failed attempts at jobs that robbed me of my confidence and belief that I was capable of working outside my home), I was another crucial fork in the road. I reopened my daycare.

I was at a breaking point before I closed my daycare for the second time. What I really wanted to do was move out to Mom's, leave all my jobs behind me and take on something familiar and part time.

I'm back to where I was. Retirement has never sounded so good. I'm tired. I'm broken. I'm empty.

Life is generous enough to keep out doling lessons, long after my desire to learn them is gone. As I wrote in yesterday's post, here I go again.