Separation of church and state

On the topic of disentangling my child from myself, I would like to take a moment to describe how much I love going to work. I was a fulltime parent for two years (as if parenting is ever less than fulltime), and now I work parttime and she's in daycare about 30 hours a week. (Daycare is another post.) I love working. I've been working 5 months now, and I've got a god-awful deadline coming up that's stressing me out to the point where I dreamed i shattered a tooth by grinding (and there's another post, there!), and I STILL love it. I'm lazy, and working is pretty much the only way that I ever produce anything. Without external pressure, I would probably lie in bed all day reading books and eating chocolate and buttered bread until I died and had to be removed from the house with a crane and driven to the morgue in one of those special ambulances for mountainously obese people.

For some reason, though, I need the satisfaction of producing something, and I need to define myself at least partly based on my production. I spent my many years of education and then working producing things - papers, homework assignments, reports, analysis, meeting agendas, whatever - and getting evaluated based on my output. And then I had a baby and for two years produced nothing that could be evaluated. I did lots of WORK, but I had nothing to show for it that I could say was mine. What I have to show for my time is Dutch, and I certainly can't evaluate myself based on her; she is her own product, not mine.

So now I get to go to work. I get to talk to grownups all day, read a book in peace on the bus, be evaluated and respected based on what I can do and write and say and deliver, and do it all without interruption, if I choose. It's fantastic. It's far from my dream job, and it's STILL fantastic. Even at its worst, it's still vastly easier than fulltime nonstop parenting, for me. (A disclaimer: I know some people who seem to thrive on fulltime parenting, but I've noticed that they all seem to have much richer inner lives than I do, and also have interesting hobbies they do at home that can help them keep track of who they are. They are NOT special-ambulance people.) Even the least interesting and pleasant jobs I've had ("human services" temping at homes for developmental disabled adults, serving bagels, serving coffee) have been a thousand times easier than parenting. When you're wiping a grown person's ass or making espresso for the guy who tries to identify the source of the coffee bean, you may be feeling bored and disgusted and annoyed, but you can be inside your own head, and you can be selfish. (I am selfish as well as lazy. So I would lie in bed and eat chocolate and I WOULDN'T SHARE IT.)

I find it extremely difficult to be in my own head when I'm the parent on duty. There's always another demand being placed on me to which I have to measure up. I have to switch gears constantly and GIVE constantly, with no feedback, no pat on the head. I've read definitions of parenting that more or less equated it to the Peace Corps - your job is to provide huge amounts of support while working to make yourself unnecessary. The lovely moments of parenting are absolutely lovely, but they do not come because I've done a good job. They just come, and being receptive to them is yet another thing I have to do. (Phew, that sounds bleak. I really do love the kid, and I think I'm a reasonably decent parent, in case this is making anybody feel like turning me in. Ha! That's why I'm using aliases!)

Working lets me be selfish. I unexpectedly find that I don't feel guilty about it, either. I gave Dutch two good years of fulltime (if frequently low-quality) parenting, and she's more than ready to start carving out a place for herself in the world. I am happier in every way since I started working, and she (hopefully) reaps the benefit of my new sunny persona.