July 22, 2010

Summer Craziness

I'm on the verge of contracting the most insidious condition known to man kind. Just being a woman increases your chances of catching it at least two fold, though repeated teeth kickings is the main cause. It's called the "why bothers," and I have to admit, one of the first symptoms was my letting the blog slip this long.

Mea Culpa.

The summer started off so well. Once we got into a routine, the girls calmed down, and things ran smoothly for a while. Then we received some worrisome news from Hubby's school. Again, it was bad, but not totally unexpected. Late spring and all throughout summer is traditionally a rough time for teachers, what with uncertain budgets, cuts, and everything. So, we both spruced up our resumes and started looking for alternatives.

It was decided that if I happened to find a job with equal or better compensation than Hubby's current position, he'd stay home and school the girls while he went back to college to obtain a business degree, and I went off to an on-site job for a couple years. I even managed to get a couple interviews.

Then I actually went to the interviews. Apparently you have to take all your tax files with you to an interview for employers to believe you've worked in the recent past if you're a young woman whose last traditional job was several years ago. One alluded to it having been a long time since I worked. The other didn't, but his body language was screaming disbelief. I'm pretty sure he wrote "liar" across the top of my resume as soon as I walked out the door instead of so much as bothering to call my references. After a month or so of this, and not so much as a nibble from any of the other companies we've put in for thus far, it's becoming difficult to muster up enough confidence and...well, hope to keep writing cover letters and applying.

Then there's just the regular life stuff. Hubby still has his job. We're just not counting on there being a job for him to have for any length of time in this economy. But while he has the job, we're still doing everything we can to make sure the school succeeds. This includes meetings, repairing and improving the facilities, researching curriculum and advertising options, and anything else that comes up. On it's own, this isn't a problem, but so much keeps cropping up unexpectedly we've had a difficult time getting anything else done, be it household projects, day trips with the girls, appointments, or anything else we might have planned on doing. Or we get started only to either have to drop everything at a moment's notice or have the girls undo it all before we can finish.

So, why bother? We're both good workers, but we have skills that are a dime-a-dozen. Why would employers want to interview us when there are engineers and experienced managers looking for the same positions, even though they are vastly overqualified? Why make appointments we probably won't be able to keep? Why start a project we likely won't be able to finish?

Why? Because not bothering is the only way failure is guaranteed.

Or at least that's what I've been telling myself.

* Picture is courtesy of Microsoft Clipart.

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