Put my money where my mouth is

On my one-year anniversary of moving to Charlotte, I reflected on how I'd changed during my year of being a housewife in Charlotte. In that post, I noted that my priorities had shifted and that I didn't think I'd ever move again to benefit my career unless I was certain my husband would benefit as well. I've told my husband something similar many times, and have also told him that if an amazing career opportunity presents itself to him and we have to move again, I will support him 100% and follow him wherever he goes.

Well, it may be time to put my money where my mouth is.

I have not been offered a job anywhere else, but I did just start a job in Charlotte. My husband, on the other hand, was offered a job in Wisconsin where we used to live. It's an exciting opportunity for him, and one that seems to be a natural fit for his skills and experience and personality. I couldn't be happier for him or more proud of him.

It couldn't be worse timing for me.

As I mentioned before, my job isn't my dream job, or even especially challenging. It is a job, however, and I like what I'm doing. And I'm very good at it. The thought of leaving my job after just a few weeks, of starting the job hunting process over again, of potentially being a housewife again ... it's a little overwhelming. I'm not sure that I want to do it again.

And I hate snow. It was 60 degrees here on Wednesday. I doubt that will happen in January in Wisconsin.

My husband is not happy in his job here, and I don't blame him. He's taken quite a few hits and he's frankly outgrown his job. He deserves better and he's earned the opportunity that he's been offered in Wisconsin. Even if we decide to stay in Charlotte, I doubt he'll stay at his company. I don't want him to stay there. But that opens up a door of even more unknowns because we don't know when he'll find something new and if he'll even like it if he does.

But I just started my job.

But we would be closer to family and friends which is very appealing.

But I love Charlotte. There I said it. I love Charlotte. Charlotte has been good for me. Granted, this may all change now that I'm not strictly a housewife, but thus far, I'm still enjoying my life in Charlotte.

I don't know what it will be like in Wisconsin this time around. I don't know if I'll have a job, or if I'll be satisfied being a housewife in Wisconsin until I can find a job. I know I won't have my country club, but I will have other things that I don't have here, like my family and friend's houses to go visit instead.

My husband and I have a lot to think about and talk about this weekend.

ADHD, medication, and motherhood - Part 2

In Part 1 of this post, I gave some background about my struggle with ADHD and the conflict I felt between taking medication to advance my career at the expense of becoming a mother. Even though that post has no comments, I've received more feedback and emails about it than any other post I've written. I interpreted that to mean that I touched on a couple of important issues for women, but these are issues that we're still not comfortable discussing publicly. For that reason, I think this is going to be an issue I'll be revisiting often, but hopefully from a different angle each time.

This post is going to pick up where I left off last time and fill you in on my thought process while I was making my decision. I was considering whether to take medication for my ADHD. I left off wondering whether a PhD and a career in academia would be fulfilling or if I would regret not having children. I sought out advice and guidance from others, but encountered more frustration than support.

I'm a reflective and instinctive person by nature, so even though I talked about my struggle with others, I knew that my answer would have to come from what I was feeling and not what I was thinking. On an intellectual level, I knew there were women who balanced work and family. I knew medication could be a short-term solution and that I could stop if I were to get pregnant or wanted to get pregnant. I knew I was legally entitled to disability accommodations. I also knew I had nothing to be ashamed of, that ADHD is real despite the public misperceptions. Intellectually, I understood this.

My intelligence and rationality couldn't overcome my gut feelings, however. I knew there were women who balanced work and family, but I felt like my ADHD would never allow me to fully balance the two in a way that would work long-term. I knew that I could stop taking medication to have a baby, but I've always felt that I will have difficulty getting pregnant and that "medication break" could extend for years. I also knew that even though I had a right to accommodations, the faculty looked down on me for asking for them and they treated me like I was dumb or incompetent. Even though I knew I had nothing to be ashamed of, I felt ashamed.

On the other hand, I didn't have the biological drive toward motherhood that I thought I should or that I felt I should. Kids bugged me. That's not entirely true. I adore my niece and nephew (they're the greatest kids ever but I'm sure I think that because I get to spoil them, feed them sugar, and send them back to their parents) and I enjoy spending time with my friends and their kids. I don't enjoy the temper tantrums or the child-centered conversations or the general adjustment of my life to suit the needs of kids. As much as my breeding friends assured me that having children was worth all the sacrifices, they often expressed jealousy at my life and resentment toward theirs, especially when I got to do things they wished they could do, from the simple, like going out to nice dinners whenever I wanted, to the extravagant, like going to Spain. I couldn't ignore those feelings either. I love my friends, but I did not want to become them.

All of these issues created the confusion and the conflict I felt, but my husband was really the one underlying force behind my decision-making. He has always been incredibly supportive and encouraging of my career path, but I also know that he wants children. In a lot of ways, he is a big kid and for a while I was concerned that I would end up parenting my husband and my child, rather than have a partner in raising a child. That concern was misguided. He will be an amazing dad and any child will be lucky to have him as a father.

My hesitations had more to do with his job demands than any concerns about his parenting skills. His job is incredibly unpredictable in terms of hours and travel, so I can't always count on him to be home at a certain time. This is annoying but generally fine when it's just the two of us, but if there was a child involved, I don't think it would be okay. There could easily be days when he wouldn't see our kids, leaving me as the primary caretaker for the kids. Of course I could have help - I would need help - but I also know that help doesn't come cheap and I'd probably be working to pay for a nanny. I know my work would suffer because I couldn't be at every meeting, go to every conference, or travel to collect my data because I wouldn't have the flexibility. One of us would need to have a job that had consistent hours, jobs that didn't require a fifty-plus hour time commitment each week. I knew faculty jobs - especially tenure-track faculty jobs - wouldn't meet this criteria. I knew my husband would never be satisfied in a job that fit that criteria either.

As much as I believe in and am thankful for women's liberation and equal rights, the reality is that marriage isn't about equality - it's about partnership. Sometimes one person has to make a sacrifice in order to do what is best for both spouses. In our case, one of us was going to have to sacrifice our career ambitions in order for us to have a family. When I honestly looked at the dual-career couples in my field who were making it work, I saw that one person had a stable 9 to 5 job and the other had the PhD, and I knew that would never be my husband and me if we continued on our current paths.

So in addition to the concerns I had about taking medication and what that meant for me professionally and personally, I also had to decide if we did have a child, could I ask my husband to give up his career so I could pursue mine, or was I willing to give up mine so he could pursue his?

Stay tuned...

Not a housewife?

I apologize for being MIA recently, but I honestly have a good reason - I got a job! I'm back working in higher education, helping at-risk students get through college. This is what I've done for many years so while it feels good to be back doing what I love to do, it's not exactly new and challenging. It does require me to get up at the crack of dawn, however, and since I'm not exactly a morning person, getting out of bed at 5:30am and managing to stay awake all day is a huge challenge.

This is why I haven't had much time to blog - not because I'm exhausted from my busy day at work, but because I feel like I need a nap from getting up so darn early. I figured I'd have a day or two of difficulty, but eventually I'd exhaust myself, fall asleep at a reasonable time, and get a decent night's sleep. Unfortunately, I get very anxious when I have to wake up early because I am convinced I'm going to sleep through my alarm clock or my alarm clock won't work or the power will go out and my clock will get shut off. Instead, I can't fall asleep at night and when I finally do, I wake up after an hour in a complete panic convinced I've overslept and am going to be late, thus beginning the vicious cycle all over again. I've had five nights of this and I'm exhausted.

Plus, people expect you to be happy and peppy and excited at work so I have to use whatever energy I can muster to smile broadly and enthusiastically tell everyone, "I LOVE sitting on the floor in the hallway for nine hours, hunched over my personal laptop, because I don't have an office or a desk or a work computer yet! Of course I don't mind! I'm flexible!"

Lying is exhausting.

Eventually I'll settle in and develop a routine that involves normal sleeping patterns so I'll have more energy to blog when I get home. Of course, I don't know if my blog really applies anymore since I'm not exactly a housewife, but let's just ignore that minor detail for now...

Happy New Year!

The Corporate Wife PSA

This morning, I watched my husband and twenty of his male co-workers play flag football. The game was actually a charity fundraiser, though I'm not exactly sure how that worked - I think everyone that played contributed $10 and then the organizer gave the money to A Child's Place. Regardless, a bunch of out of shape, banker-type guys decided to get together on a beautiful fall day to play football.

I decided to go because I have an irrational fear that my husband is going to end up in the ER if I'm not there. I suppose it's not entirely irrational - he once went to a weekend-long bachelor party and ended up in the ER(to get a few stitches) after taking a basketball in the face. But when I think of him playing flag football with his co-workers, I'm more concerned about broken fingers and ankles, pulled hamstrings, and torn ACLs (my biggest fear) because most of these guys are weekend warriors. For the record, my husband is in great shape and left the game mostly unscathed - he may have a bruise or two but nothing serious. His co-workers, however, are going to be sore for the next week. And I did have to buddy tape a dislocated pinky finger for one of his co-workers. That was kinda gross.

Anyway, I wasn't the only wife on the sideline. The organizer's wife was there taking pictures, and a couple of other girlfriends and wives arrived later. After a few minutes of small talk with the women, I wanted to be out on the field with the boys. Instead I took out my Kindle and pretended to read.

Maybe it's because I've been married for eight years and with my husband for fourteen years, maybe it's because I'm in my thirties, or maybe it's because I don't really relate to women very well, but I felt like I had nothing in common with these women. I could go on a rant about what they were talking about and bore you with all the details of what was said, but I was bored and annoyed by them and I don't feel that you should be too. I'm nice like that.

But let me just say this - I've been a corporate wife for eight years and I've learned a few things about how to behave when we get together with work people. It's one thing when we're with co-workers and their families from different departments - people who are more like friends and colleagues - but it's completely different when we're with supervisors or supervisees. Even though we may be out of the office and in a more casual setting, the boss is still the boss. And the boss's wife (or husband) will pass along any information that is shared to the boss, and that information can influence any future social invitations. And believe me, those social invitations are important - probably more important than they should be. But that's the corporate game.

So here's my PSA for all the corporate girlfriends, future corporate wives, and current corporate wives - it's never okay to discuss your sex life with your boyfriend's boss's wife. I can't believe I actually have to write that, but after hearing the conversations today, apparently not everyone knows this. It's especially not okay to discuss your sex life when you live in the Bible Belt, where not everyone shares the same carefree attitudes towards sex on the first date or even premarital sex as, say, a 22 year old, recent college grad from Florida State. Hypothetically-speaking of course. And frankly, if any of the wives of the people my husband supervises said anything like that to me, I'd make sure my husband knew what was being said about his employee - not because of my own religious or personal beliefs, but because I don't like when strangers tell me about their sex lives. My husband probably wouldn't care, but in the corporate wife world, it would make a difference. Can you imagine taking a client and his wife out to dinner and discussing getting drunk and having sex in a hot tub? Seriously, I still can't believe I have to write this. It's not okay.

Now, I may not have left a great impression because I ignored the conversation and pretended to read while they were talking. I own that. But none of those wives and girlfriends have significant others who work with my husband so I'm not particularly concerned. And I did notice when the guy dislocated his finger, and I hiked back to the car to get the tape and an instant ice pack out of my husband's soccer bag.

And guess who noticed and thanked me and my husband for that? The CFO.

I guess sometimes it pays to be an anti-social, irrationally fearful, corporate wife.