Home?

For some reason I named this blog Home with Gail. I guess it was nostalgia, since home is not where I am most of the time any more. This transition from homemaker to outside-worker is not an easy one. for me. There are so many things that I just plain long for and miss that used to be part of my life when I was 'at home'. Being able to get up and spend a whole day on a project of my own choosing is one of them. I could sew or garden or work on the house or build something with/for the kids or start several big recipes at once, knowing I had time to make significant progress before I had to clean up the mess or go to bed. I could start in on a project in the morning and know I could come back to it again and again in between household chores and homeschool lessons. I could flex my schedule around whichever way seemed to work the best each day. And then there was the school year schedule -- the holidays and summer vacation. My best energy -- for me, the morning hours -- could be devoted to the work of my choosing. Now it feels as if home gets the leftovers and work sucks the creativity right out of me. By the time I am ready to start doing 'something' in the evening, it is too late for me to accomplish much of anything and still go to bed at a decent hour to be ready for -- you guessed it -- work -- in the morning. I don't like my life being defined this way.

This sounds so grumpy. Probably I SHOULD be noticing how this job is a pretty good fit for my skills and personality, how it has room in it for a fair bit of creativity, and how it also is more flexible than many other types of work. I SHOULD be grateful for a good boss, a compatible co-worker, an office close to home, a chance to help children and mothers and get paid for it. I should be grateful that I had the chance to spend 20+ years as my own boss, and that I was able to enjoy a great deal more time with my children than many women have opportunity for. I probably should think this way, but really I just don't. Really I just feel this longing to be free of my work responsibility and be able to say yes again to my self.