Life, etc.

Hugo’s nine month birthday is around the corner. In some respects this birthday is more of a milestone for him than for me. Nine months with a baby outside, and I’m starting to wake up. 

In the days when when he was fresh and new, I spent the days staring at my baby while he napped, and gazing out the West-facing windows, watching the light change.  Feeds, and new diapers, and the odd home-cooked meal were significant accomplishments. He needed me to be next to him most of the time, and I was happy to be next to him, cocooned, hibernating.

These days, however, I’m hungry for the outside. I crave to be more in the world. I’m ready to be doing, and achieving, and making, and moving. 

I love spending time with my babies. I love being next to them as they learn to bang two blocks together. I love knowing the expression on their faces as they drop a spoon from the highchair for the first time. A ha! Gravity. I love knowing the exact meaning of small movements, feeling their energy change as the day progresses. Even the temper tantrums, when I handle them well, feel satisfying, like an accomplishment I can tick off. I supported my kid, I helped her work though something difficult. That’s significant. 

But I’m also a person outside my children. I feed on accomplishment. When I go to bed and my notebook is full with checkmarks, I feel like I’m really am something. I real proper human in this world. I miss having an identity, an answer to that question, “What do you do?” I miss earning a pay check, and the freedom and independence that comes with that. 

Going back to work, though, it’s a bit complicated. I don’t want to be away from my kids for ten hours a day. And then there are visa issues, legalities, questions of taxation. These aren’t barriers, necessarily; they can be overcome. Still, these are small nuisances that add weight to the matter, making a difficult decision that much more slippery. 

More difficult, however, are the inevitable moves that will crop up. Any professional ventures must be stopped every few years as we change country. Planning is difficult because I won’t know when we will move, nor to where, until a move is exactly upon us. 

A move demands that I sideline my work to pack and look for schools, and find an apartment, help my kids make friends, and figure out where the grocery stores are, and weather we need a new washing machine? Curtains? A fridge? A car? I spend time figuring out where can I buy wholewheat flower, which doctor will be ours, what kind of vaccines we need, and learning to get around anew city. I have to focus my attention on the emotional needs of my children as we say goodbye to people and places that are familiar and important. I don’t resent these tasks. Our lifestyle demands them; they are part of my role. So, I do them happily, and with love. But they take time. A few months, at bare minimum. 

All of which is to say, a traditional 9-5 super linear career is not something to which I can reasonably commit.

The most logical solution, I think, would be to create a job for myself, as I’ve done in the past. To do something part-time, from home that can be paused according to the needs of our family. 

I have a few ideas rattling around my head right now: Going back to writing again? But I often sit down to write, stare at a blank screen for 45 minutes, and think, gha! I hate this! But maybe that’s just a function of writing itself?

I’m also thinking of a textile based-project which I began working on last year. But that requires a certain degree of location stability, and I have no idea if we will move in six weeks or in three years, and also self doubt and gah.

Or, getting more serious with photography. To really study, and hone my skills, and start shooting professionally. 

Anyway, no thoughtful conclusory remarks here, but these questions are keep wheeling around my brain these days. If you’ve been a trailing spouse, or otherwise given up your professional life to support your family, how did you figure out what to do, like, when you grow up?