I have to go back to work. After almost four years of only working a few occasional hours a week, I need a regular income again. Our budget has always been tight, but I was managing to stretch it far enough until the kid started to drive and our water bill almost doubled (mostly unrelated except for timing). If you know me, you know I have a straight up phobia around looking for work. I'd rather be covered in spiders while making a speech in my underwear in high school (in fact, if someone would like to pay me to do that, let's talk). It's irrational and mostly baseless, but I've never gotten a good job the old fashioned, send in an application, get an interview sort of way. All the good jobs came from someone else doing the leg work or me knowing someone. If I could hand my crappy (because it literally scares me to work on it) resume to someone and just do whatever they choose for me, I probably would.
This time around is extra scary, though, because some big things have changed since the last time I was in the workforce. I'm married now. I can't go use up all my people energy (INTROVERT with a capital I-N-T-R-O-V-E-R-T) at work and then shut myself in my room all night to recharge like I used to do. I have to find something that leaves me able to be civil to my husband and the teenager. No point in doing something for the family that turns me into someone they hate to live with.
Please don't mistake introversion for shyness or devoid of people skills. I am neither. I just find people mentally exhausting. I'd be great at a job that requires strong interpersonal skills and a lot of time completely alone. Comment if you know of one! I just can't people all the time.
On the upside, I'm Keto now, which means I'm not physically tired all the time. I think I started having chronic exhaustion around puberty (I carried a pillow so I could nap in study hall). I lost track of how many days I struggled to keep my eyes open at work in the afternoon or to find a way to nap over lunch. For the first time in my life I can imagine putting in an eight hour day and still having the strength to cook dinner AND wash the dishes. I think I'd still have my last job if I wasn't so foggy and distracted all the time from being tired. I might even have managed to work my way up. I might have had a career.
And that's really the question I'm struggling with today. To be or just to work. To search out something I think I'd want to do and put my heart into it or to find something that will get the bills paid and put my time in. To use my education and skills or just my hours. To risk the stress of real responsibility and having to attend meetings that should be memos and failing hard (because the higher you climb the harder you fall) or the stress of being insanely bored and treated like I'm lesser because that must be the only job I could get.
In my dreams, I find a professional job that's mostly computer work (I'm a solid graphic designer, great with presentation software, basic digital skills, decent writer) and only required 30 or less hours each week. In reality, my choices seem to be part time unskilled work or out-on-a-limb, they'd-only-choose-me-if-no-one-really-qualified-applied, kinds of full time jobs. If I have to choose between the two, it won't be an easy choice. Wish me luck.
