Exactly What I Needed to Read Today

I've been disappointed with how much I've had to work for about 13 years now.  I'll give you a hint about why I know exactly how long I've been feeling this way, my daughter will be 13 next month.  Up until I became a mother, I'd never had a problem with working really hard for pretty long hours.  I still don't have a problem with working really hard, it's just the long hours that are causing me problems now.  My values are family first, and I want to spend lots of time with my children because they grow up incredibly fast.  I'd also like to spend enough time with my husband that I don't find myself looking across the dinner table at a stranger when the kids are grown, plus I actually do like the guy and enjoy his company.  So ever since I returned to work after my first maternity leave back in the summer of 2001 I've wanted to work less.

My husband is a teacher so we've never been able to figure out the financial realities of making this work while maintaining the lifestyle we desire.  I don't want that to sound shallow, it's not like we live in a mansion and drive fancy vehicles, we wouldn't be able to pay the mortgage AND eat if we didn't have my paycheck and we weren't willing to give up shelter or food.  Also, if I'm being completely honest, I really like the work I do and the intellectual stimulation it provides so I've never wanted to completely stop working.  Because I have abilities in multiple areas (a former CFO once referred to me as his "utility player") and have always been willing to help others, my job has always been rather large.  So it's made part-time work in my current role unfeasible.  (Has anyone else experienced the problem that when you offer to help with something it becomes part of your recurring job responsibilities?)

A couple of years ago I read a book called Our Divided Political Heart by E.J. Dionne Jr. that really made me think, but the reason why I've never forgotten the book is because of a quote in the book by Jeffrey Stout, a Princeton professor of religion that summed up my issue perfectly.

...he criticized its partisans for rarely offering "any clear sense of what to do about our misgivings aside from yearning pensively for conditions we are either unwilling or unable to bring about."

That's me in a nutshell:  Yearning pensively for a different work situation which I'm either unwilling and/or unable to bring about.  Then this morning I read something that really hit home and altered my perspective from this blog post titled Fear is the Root of Your Problems by Leo Babauta.  The reason why I feel so overwhelmed with all my responsibilities at work and home is because I have an ideal in my mind and I expect myself to meet that ideal.  From his blog post:

You have lots to do, but the amount isn’t the problem. The problem is you’re worried about getting it all done, which means you have an ideal (I’m going to get it all done on time, and it’ll be done perfectly) and you fear that this ideal won’t come true. So the fear is based on an ideal, but the ideal isn’t realistic. You won’t get it all done perfectly and on time. No one does. Accept the reality, that you’ll get some done, to the best of your ability, and if you fail you’ll learn from that, and that’s how the world works. No one is perfect. The ideal doesn’t exist.

He then gives advice on how to deal with the fear, and since his bullet about stress resonated most clearly with me, his point about choosing not to have an ideal also made the most sense to me.

We can return to this moment, and see that it is perfectly fine as is. There is no ideal when we’re seeing this actual moment and accepting it for what it is. If there’s no ideal, there’s no fear. If we don’t have an ideal of some kind of success, we don’t fear failure. If we don’t have an ideal of what we should be, we don’t fear that we’re not good enough. If we don’t have an ideal of what someone else should be, we don’t get angry at them.

I highly suggest reading the whole post linked above because there may be other issues that he talks about that resonate more with you. That is exactly what I needed to read today to help me to skew my perspective and start thinking about different ways I can choose to address these issues, because they aren't going away and I'm tired of pensive yearning.