First Day of Work
Earlier this week, it was my first day of work in a long time. After taking a fairly long break voluntarily (because things were not going in the right direction where I was at), I found something better and finally started. Ideally, the start could have waited a bit longer until my 1 year old son was in daycare in July, but it’s fine since it’s only a short while to juggle everything.
I remember when I got to volunteer a lot at my six-year-old daughter E’s class for her art projects. One of the earliest sessions that I went to, one of her friends asked me what I did for work and why I was there in the middle of the day. They weren’t used to seeing the dads in the room as volunteers. E immediately tells her friend that I wasn’t working and needed a job. She didn’t miss a beat. All of her friends around her were so sweet. They had lots of ideas for jobs that I could do, including working at the school in their classroom. It was honestly quite funny and endearing.
Fast forward to this week, I finally do have a job and was going in for the first time in a while. My kids aren’t used to seeing me dress up for work, so it definitely gets a reaction every morning. It’s also difficult to juggle everything with drop offs and breakfast. Sometimes I have work or meetings in the mornings and even though it’s only been a few days, it’s been tough. I know many families go through the juggling every single day. I think for us, it’s especially hard because it was going from me being able to help out in the mornings to me being able to kind of help out in the mornings.
At least, for the time being, I could still do one of the drop offs. I can still get the kids ready, brush their teeth at times, and feed them some breakfast. I can’t always do it every day because of work, but I’m glad there’s at least some flexibility for me to help out. As things change, everybody in the family needs to pitch in. We all need to do our part (and that means my 1 year old son L is included in that!). When we all do our part, our family operates a lot more smoothly and that’s something that we need more of as things change.
