To Work Or Not To Work, That Is The Question

The last nine months or so have flown by so quickly that I really can't believe it.  The boys have been growing like weeds, and Max is starting to pull himself up and cruise around the house.  Nathan is still creeping around on his belly, and he sometimes seems kind of frustrated that he has a hard time either pulling himself up into a sitting or standing position.  I don't have any current stats on their heights and weights, but we go back to the ped for a check up in a few weeks so I guess we'll just have to wait until then to find out for sure.

Now that the babies are closing in on their first birthday, M and I have actually started to try and figure out when and if I should return to work, and when and if we might try to try again on the pregnancy front.  Surprisingly enough, I've kind of started to miss working (at least in theory) lately and I'm starting to feel like I might be ready to try working part time once the boys turn one.  I love staying home with the boys, but sometimes I feel like it would do us all some good to get the boys into school part of the week to socialize with other kids and to get me out of the house and back into the real world part of the week as well.  Of course I need to figure out if the whole cost of child care thing would render my working pointless or not.  At least for the summer I would have my sister to take care of the boys because she will have the summer off from college and lots of free time on her hands to take care of them.  After that, I'm considering a newish preschool that recently opened up about four blocks from where we live.  As you can see I'm still kind of ironing out all the details in my head, and all of this may become moot if I can't find a job anyway.

Which leads me to the big issue of what kind of work I would do anyway.  The few long time readers of this blog that are out there know that I was less than thrilled with my last job.  My boss was a nut and the work was oh so incredibly boring that it practically brought me to tears on a daily basis.  I've thought of seeing if they would consider bringing me back part time, but the intensity with which I disliked that job in the first place has been the biggest impediment to my even asking the question.  And then there is the reality that there are so few part time gigs to come by in my field, so I would probably have to consider taking either temp work or contract work (and neither of these is a very attractive option.)  What else am I forgetting?  Oh yes, the time and effort lawyering demands of the practitioner, the expectation that the job will always come first, so that the private life always has to lose out to work, work, work.

Can you believe I ever gave it all up in the first place?

On the other hand there are still times that I miss practicing law.  Because when the game was good, it was really, really good.  The true practice of law is almost like a vocation rather than just a job.  It can consume you completely if you let it, and I have to admit that I've often enjoyed becoming completely drawn into the work in the past.  So as you can probably tell I'm feeling incredibly conflicted about the whole thing.  I've been putting off updating my resume and I've only cruised the job listings a few times.  If I want to get this ball rolling I need to do it soon though, it's just so hard for me to really decide what I want to do and then make a commitment to actively pursuing work once I'm sure I want to go for it.  At this point I'm leaning towards shopping my resume around a little and seeing what happens.  I can always turn down work if I decide it's not the right thing for me to do.

In the meanwhile I've also been mulling over the big question of whether we should try again at some point in the future.  That will have to be another post, because I'm still formulating all of my thoughts and deciding what I really want to do.  But let me say that I am feeling a pull in my heart to try again in a year or two. 

So there you have it.

And I will try to post with an update soon on how the boys are doing after the next pediatrician appointment.

Comments

[soralis]

Don't they grow fast? I sure hope you can find a job that fits you and your schedule (sounds much more interesting than my job!) I was a career girl before, I think that it was just because I needed something to do with my time while TTC!!! I wish I didn't have to go back.

Take care and enjoy you little ones!

[Heather]

I am right there with you. Although in my case it's not so much a desire to go back as it is horror at the thought of how much time and money I spent getting this law degree that I'm not using. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't. I'll be curious to see how the part-time gig hunting goes for you.

Can't wait to hear how the boys are doing!