Piles of Things
In our house, our favorite meals consist of what Brad calls, a "pile of things." Say, a bed of rice with fresh veggies on top and drizzled with some kind of dressing. Or a piece of broiled fish with a bunch of chopped veggies on top. We also like sandwiches (not your standard lunch meat and cheese, but bread with a bunch of veggies piled on and maybe egg or mushrooms or chicken inside). Wraps and Quesadillas, too. The point is, we like meals that are "all in one." Not only is this a convenient and healthy way to eat, but it's pretty much dead-on for the smorgasbord that is our lives.
A couple of days ago I got a summons for grand jury selection. I had to go online and complete a questionnaire that would help them determine if I’m what they’re looking for. One of the questions asked my occupation. I stared at the blinking cursor for a moment and considered what to put. My knee-jerk answer was “homemaker” because, well, that’s what I’ve always put and that’s my primary responsibility at the moment. Brad has always spoken with more progressive terminology, stating that I am a “Work from home mom” because I do a lot of things besides “making a home”(which is pretty ambiguous if you think about it) or even taking care of children.
Sometimes, though, you can be something without actually BELIEVING you are, know what I mean? Take “child of God” as a label. We hear it all the time, but life is this seemingly endless process of finding the conviction to believe it. Once we actually believe it, ACTING like it becomes a lot easier. Anyway, lots of things are like this. My husband calls it “faking it ‘til you make it” because you have to ACT like what you want to be in order to BECOME that person.
In the case of writing, I want to BE a writer. I want to sell books. I want people to read them. And by golly it’d be nice to contribute to the family budget via this avenue. But to be honest, despite the huge amount of time I spent working toward the goal of publishing my first novel (and have continued for subsequent books), I never believed I was “a writer” in the same way I believed I was “a homemaker.” “Occupation” carries with it an air of obligation. We go to our job at wherever because we have an responsibility to provide for ourselves/family. I have a responsibility toward my children, an obligation if you will. These obligations are necessary for survival of our family. Therefore I was a homemaker. My primary purpose for publishing was not and is not to make money, therefore writing never felt like an obligation in that way.
But as I weighed the word “homemaker,” it suddenly did not feel like the right label anymore. I don’t feel like a homemaker now in the same way six months ago I didn’t feel like “writer” was my occupation.
But a lot of things have happened since then. They haven’t changed the reality of my obligations, but they have changed the way I see myself against the backdrop of my day-to-day life.
So what DO I do? For one thing, I have executive assistant responsibilities toward our insurance and investment business, which we have now had for around 8 years. It’s something I have always taken part in—answered emails, checked stock prices, quoted insurance, called clients. I do this from home. In the case of phone calls, I hide behind 2 locked doors to get a kid-free moment to talk to people who might not see working amid screaming children as "professional."
As for our stock portfolio, I’ve recently taken on more responsibilities toward it so that we could stop paying someone else to do it and thus earn more money. This job means analyzing charts, options chains, and trade history, setting exit prices and researching the earnings calendars and looking at valuations.
It’s a bit hectic at times to juggle all these things during the business day. Answering an email about an escrow close is often woven in with making my kids lunch or hugging an injured child and settling disputes. I can have Zillow pulled up to look at the specs on a home for an insurance quote while Iyov sits next to me on another computer playing ABC Mouse. Keshet can be on my lap (her favorite place) while I answer emails.
I think I always subconsciously saw these things that I so regularly do as not a “for real” job because I didn’t leave my kids at daycare to spend 8 hours at an office. I didn't earn a paycheck with my own name on it and my work day does not flow seamlessly without interruption. I'm constantly moving between completely unrelated tasks (wipe 2 year old's butt and then go back to composing that email, followed by looking up a recipe for dinner, for example) But seeing myself as a non-professional is societal standards talking, not mine. I have simply bought into the American idea that civilized society means segregating the different parts of our lives in the same way we might divide side dishes from the main dish at dinner.
And now I am also a writer. For too long I didn’t see this job as seriously as my other jobs because I did not see it as an obligation. Instead it was a hobby that took up a TON of time. But again, I allowed a cultural standard to dictate the word “obligation” and to tell me how “legit” I was as a writer. Book sales, I thought, would decide whether I could put “writer” as my occupation on a government form. But the reality is that writing IS an obligation. The circumstances and experiences of my life have breathed it into me. Putting it down on “paper” is the exhale. It has altered the way I see everything and the way I treat everyone. It has been miracle grow to my spirituality and a mirror to reflect my true self-worth. Accepting that writing is quite literally essential to my well-being is something I have come to understand gradually, because it took a lot of effort and experience to stop feeling guilty over "taking so much time to myself." Once I did accept it's necessity, I took it as seriously as I did quoting an insurance policy. I have slowly but surely been edging toward feeling I have the right to label myself as a “writer” when I tell people my occupation.
I don’t think one blank is sufficient for a question about my occupation, but of all the things I currently do, writing will be the one that remains as long as I am alive. It describes who I am and what I do better than anything else. So "writer" is what I put on that jury summons questionnaire. And it felt absolutely right to do so. Not because of the royalty deposits I finally get every month, (as substantiating as that is), but because I finally allowed it to be as important as my other obligations without guilt. Now I spend time on it without the mentality of “I should be doing xyz instead” but with the mentality of “I have to go to work.” And like all forms of work, some parts are pleasant (the writing itself), and some parts are not so pleasant (the marketing).
And the really cool thing is that I stopped seeing this thing as time I deprive my children of. Instead all of my “jobs” are meshed together in a way that sometimes feels like a well-oiled machine, and other times feels like a giant pot of 15-bean soup that gives everyone gas afterward. And I'm totally fine with imperfection of such a giant mess of things to do and trying to find enough hours in the day to do them.
Accepting writing as one of my jobs has also done something I did not foresee. It has brought balance to itself. A lot of writers face the chore of making themselves find time to write. I face the chore of stopping myself from writing too often. But ironically, once I allowed writing a place of necessity in my life, I stopped feeling so compelled to do it all the time. In effect, I can tear myself away without withdrawls. And I am content to wait until another free moment arises to crack on with it again. I can't say I'm going to bed any earlier (too many demands from too many jobs!) but I know I'm getting better at balancing my many obligations, tossing aside the ones that don't truly matter and allocating enough time to the ones that do. As a result, moments are fuller and I feel less haggard. Even crazy post-15-bean-soup flatulence is a reason to laugh at the end of the day. Disappointment is shorter lived. Patience lasts longer. We're still a work in progress, but I only ever demand of myself that I am moving in a direction and I can undoubtedly say I'm doing that.
Look, I can’t tell you my house is immaculate, (which I think is a waste of time to care about when you have small children), but I’m more pleased and concerned with showing my kids that work is well-being and well-being is work. My Dad was someone who was always, always working (It should be no surprise then, to see who I chose for a spouse), except when we watched Star Trek, which we did as a family. :-) Dad would come home from his job on base (he was in the military) and he'd start working on some project--building a shed, fixing the chicken coop, rebuilding a lawnmower engine. Whatever. His weekends consisted of nothing but him outside, working. Mowing. Spraying our peach orchard. Fixing the tractor. As a child I once asked my mom, "Doesn't Dad ever like to relax?" Her answer, "For Dad, working is relaxing."
As I got older, those projects my Dad did began to involve us girls more and more. We pruned peach trees and then picked bushels of them to sell in the summer, we helped fill the hay barn with bales to store for winter and sell to surrounding horse owners. We gardened. We helped build our horse barn and we trimmed yards of hedges and mowed miles of fencelines and cleaned stalls and fixed fences. Even when my dad was sick with cancer, he was working on something and not until he was unable to get out of bed did he stop. It is this legacy of work he left behind, and it is the one I have more desperately fretted over teaching my children than anything else. I cannot give my children a farm. But I can give them an environment of work. I can always be doing it and by my eagerness demonstrate that I look forward to it.
We are often warned against "working too much" and neglecting the needs of our family, but I'd argue the problem is not working; the problem is trying to live work-life and family-life separately. But if this segregation never occurs, it's not possible to do it too much. The kids know what our various jobs require, having been in and around it all the time. If Dad gets called away by his job outside the home, they get to take turns going with him. It is the greatest joy for them and I cannot think of any moments when the look on their faces and the joy in their voices communicates how special they feel during those times that working and spending time together occur precisely simultaneously. Even a trip to the pool or park together doesn't rival their feelings on being taken to work. "Mom is working" or "Dad is working" are phrases so often repeated in my home. I relish the fact that they understand it's importance, the priority that work is, and that it is ever-present and that we love that fact. And I love that these many responsibilities of ours reside together, in one place. This ideal is one that actually feels ideal. I have a lot of things on my plate, but family is not the main dish and work the side dishes. Instead, it is all-in-one, inseparable like one big pile of things that I get to enjoy all at once.
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| Steak and corn yumminess on a bed of red cabbage AKA Pile of Things |
A couple of days ago I got a summons for grand jury selection. I had to go online and complete a questionnaire that would help them determine if I’m what they’re looking for. One of the questions asked my occupation. I stared at the blinking cursor for a moment and considered what to put. My knee-jerk answer was “homemaker” because, well, that’s what I’ve always put and that’s my primary responsibility at the moment. Brad has always spoken with more progressive terminology, stating that I am a “Work from home mom” because I do a lot of things besides “making a home”(which is pretty ambiguous if you think about it) or even taking care of children.
Sometimes, though, you can be something without actually BELIEVING you are, know what I mean? Take “child of God” as a label. We hear it all the time, but life is this seemingly endless process of finding the conviction to believe it. Once we actually believe it, ACTING like it becomes a lot easier. Anyway, lots of things are like this. My husband calls it “faking it ‘til you make it” because you have to ACT like what you want to be in order to BECOME that person.
In the case of writing, I want to BE a writer. I want to sell books. I want people to read them. And by golly it’d be nice to contribute to the family budget via this avenue. But to be honest, despite the huge amount of time I spent working toward the goal of publishing my first novel (and have continued for subsequent books), I never believed I was “a writer” in the same way I believed I was “a homemaker.” “Occupation” carries with it an air of obligation. We go to our job at wherever because we have an responsibility to provide for ourselves/family. I have a responsibility toward my children, an obligation if you will. These obligations are necessary for survival of our family. Therefore I was a homemaker. My primary purpose for publishing was not and is not to make money, therefore writing never felt like an obligation in that way.
But as I weighed the word “homemaker,” it suddenly did not feel like the right label anymore. I don’t feel like a homemaker now in the same way six months ago I didn’t feel like “writer” was my occupation.
But a lot of things have happened since then. They haven’t changed the reality of my obligations, but they have changed the way I see myself against the backdrop of my day-to-day life.
So what DO I do? For one thing, I have executive assistant responsibilities toward our insurance and investment business, which we have now had for around 8 years. It’s something I have always taken part in—answered emails, checked stock prices, quoted insurance, called clients. I do this from home. In the case of phone calls, I hide behind 2 locked doors to get a kid-free moment to talk to people who might not see working amid screaming children as "professional."
As for our stock portfolio, I’ve recently taken on more responsibilities toward it so that we could stop paying someone else to do it and thus earn more money. This job means analyzing charts, options chains, and trade history, setting exit prices and researching the earnings calendars and looking at valuations.
It’s a bit hectic at times to juggle all these things during the business day. Answering an email about an escrow close is often woven in with making my kids lunch or hugging an injured child and settling disputes. I can have Zillow pulled up to look at the specs on a home for an insurance quote while Iyov sits next to me on another computer playing ABC Mouse. Keshet can be on my lap (her favorite place) while I answer emails.
I think I always subconsciously saw these things that I so regularly do as not a “for real” job because I didn’t leave my kids at daycare to spend 8 hours at an office. I didn't earn a paycheck with my own name on it and my work day does not flow seamlessly without interruption. I'm constantly moving between completely unrelated tasks (wipe 2 year old's butt and then go back to composing that email, followed by looking up a recipe for dinner, for example) But seeing myself as a non-professional is societal standards talking, not mine. I have simply bought into the American idea that civilized society means segregating the different parts of our lives in the same way we might divide side dishes from the main dish at dinner.
 |
| Me at my "jobs." Photo taken by one of my apprentices. :-) |
And now I am also a writer. For too long I didn’t see this job as seriously as my other jobs because I did not see it as an obligation. Instead it was a hobby that took up a TON of time. But again, I allowed a cultural standard to dictate the word “obligation” and to tell me how “legit” I was as a writer. Book sales, I thought, would decide whether I could put “writer” as my occupation on a government form. But the reality is that writing IS an obligation. The circumstances and experiences of my life have breathed it into me. Putting it down on “paper” is the exhale. It has altered the way I see everything and the way I treat everyone. It has been miracle grow to my spirituality and a mirror to reflect my true self-worth. Accepting that writing is quite literally essential to my well-being is something I have come to understand gradually, because it took a lot of effort and experience to stop feeling guilty over "taking so much time to myself." Once I did accept it's necessity, I took it as seriously as I did quoting an insurance policy. I have slowly but surely been edging toward feeling I have the right to label myself as a “writer” when I tell people my occupation.
I don’t think one blank is sufficient for a question about my occupation, but of all the things I currently do, writing will be the one that remains as long as I am alive. It describes who I am and what I do better than anything else. So "writer" is what I put on that jury summons questionnaire. And it felt absolutely right to do so. Not because of the royalty deposits I finally get every month, (as substantiating as that is), but because I finally allowed it to be as important as my other obligations without guilt. Now I spend time on it without the mentality of “I should be doing xyz instead” but with the mentality of “I have to go to work.” And like all forms of work, some parts are pleasant (the writing itself), and some parts are not so pleasant (the marketing).
And the really cool thing is that I stopped seeing this thing as time I deprive my children of. Instead all of my “jobs” are meshed together in a way that sometimes feels like a well-oiled machine, and other times feels like a giant pot of 15-bean soup that gives everyone gas afterward. And I'm totally fine with imperfection of such a giant mess of things to do and trying to find enough hours in the day to do them.
Accepting writing as one of my jobs has also done something I did not foresee. It has brought balance to itself. A lot of writers face the chore of making themselves find time to write. I face the chore of stopping myself from writing too often. But ironically, once I allowed writing a place of necessity in my life, I stopped feeling so compelled to do it all the time. In effect, I can tear myself away without withdrawls. And I am content to wait until another free moment arises to crack on with it again. I can't say I'm going to bed any earlier (too many demands from too many jobs!) but I know I'm getting better at balancing my many obligations, tossing aside the ones that don't truly matter and allocating enough time to the ones that do. As a result, moments are fuller and I feel less haggard. Even crazy post-15-bean-soup flatulence is a reason to laugh at the end of the day. Disappointment is shorter lived. Patience lasts longer. We're still a work in progress, but I only ever demand of myself that I am moving in a direction and I can undoubtedly say I'm doing that.
Look, I can’t tell you my house is immaculate, (which I think is a waste of time to care about when you have small children), but I’m more pleased and concerned with showing my kids that work is well-being and well-being is work. My Dad was someone who was always, always working (It should be no surprise then, to see who I chose for a spouse), except when we watched Star Trek, which we did as a family. :-) Dad would come home from his job on base (he was in the military) and he'd start working on some project--building a shed, fixing the chicken coop, rebuilding a lawnmower engine. Whatever. His weekends consisted of nothing but him outside, working. Mowing. Spraying our peach orchard. Fixing the tractor. As a child I once asked my mom, "Doesn't Dad ever like to relax?" Her answer, "For Dad, working is relaxing."
As I got older, those projects my Dad did began to involve us girls more and more. We pruned peach trees and then picked bushels of them to sell in the summer, we helped fill the hay barn with bales to store for winter and sell to surrounding horse owners. We gardened. We helped build our horse barn and we trimmed yards of hedges and mowed miles of fencelines and cleaned stalls and fixed fences. Even when my dad was sick with cancer, he was working on something and not until he was unable to get out of bed did he stop. It is this legacy of work he left behind, and it is the one I have more desperately fretted over teaching my children than anything else. I cannot give my children a farm. But I can give them an environment of work. I can always be doing it and by my eagerness demonstrate that I look forward to it.
We are often warned against "working too much" and neglecting the needs of our family, but I'd argue the problem is not working; the problem is trying to live work-life and family-life separately. But if this segregation never occurs, it's not possible to do it too much. The kids know what our various jobs require, having been in and around it all the time. If Dad gets called away by his job outside the home, they get to take turns going with him. It is the greatest joy for them and I cannot think of any moments when the look on their faces and the joy in their voices communicates how special they feel during those times that working and spending time together occur precisely simultaneously. Even a trip to the pool or park together doesn't rival their feelings on being taken to work. "Mom is working" or "Dad is working" are phrases so often repeated in my home. I relish the fact that they understand it's importance, the priority that work is, and that it is ever-present and that we love that fact. And I love that these many responsibilities of ours reside together, in one place. This ideal is one that actually feels ideal. I have a lot of things on my plate, but family is not the main dish and work the side dishes. Instead, it is all-in-one, inseparable like one big pile of things that I get to enjoy all at once.
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