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How loud the silence
It has been a strange time for me over the past 6mths, adjusting as my wife's job grows and grows.
In less than twelve months of being there, she is now Acting Head of a section spanning four departments - Finance, Procurement and her own areas of Insurance & Risk Management. This is partly due to the Dept.Head (her big boss) being away on extended leave for family reasons. An extended leave that is looking like it might be 3 or 4 months minimum!
So, instead of just being the Manager of Insurance & Risk, she is now responsible for about an extra 30 staff under a number of different managers across a range of disciplines. Most of those managers (at the same level as my wife) have been there for 5 to 10 years. Strangely, the fact they've been there so long, and my wife has been promoted above them after only 9mths doesn't seem to have bothered them much. There doesn't seem to be any snarkiness or rivalry at her appointment. On the contrary, she says they've all been wonderful.
Unfortunately, this has all meant a lot of extra work for her. She is working a lot later, getting home later and, when she finally does get home, she pulls out the laptop and keeps on working. Weekends too! She is the sort of person who revels in this type of thing. As long as she has reports to do and spreadsheets to pour over, she's happy.
She's also been away interstate about 2 weeks out of every 5 for the past two months. Currently she is at the annual Risk Management conference on the Gold Coast. She's been there since the start of the weekend. I do wonder which sleazy old Risk Manager organised a conference on the Gold Coast during Schoolies Week though. It is a bit of a boys club, which maybe explains the decision of the old perverts. But my wife is enjoying it. She was asked to present a paper on "Climate Change and Risk Management" which apparently went well. Today, she is chairing a panel with some big o'seas guest speaker.
Last week she was in Brisbane for talks with their Insurers. Before that it was Melbourne.
I am extremely happy about all this. She is really forging ahead with her career, and I'm sort of enjoying being a 'kept man' :)
It has meant a lot of changes in our life-style though, and with me being the 'house mum' all the time, it is getting increasingly hard for me to run my business. There just isn't time to do the clothes washing and ironing, wash the dishes, help with homework, cook the dinners, keep the boys from killing each other, etc etc and keep in contact with all my clients and do their work as well.
If I try to be 'house mum/dad' and 'small business owner' at the same time, it leaves me no room for writing and illustration.
So, I've been cutting back on my client roster. I've only kept those clients I have a really close relationship with, and those are generally the smarter ones who don't need hand-holding every second of the day and night. That should make things a lot easier, and leave me more room for writing.
I think the hardest thing to get used to though is the silence. When you've lived with someone for going on 18yrs it is very strange sleeping in an empty bed at night, with no one beside you. It gets where you don't notice they're there once you're asleep, but if they're NOT there sleep comes very hard indeed. It is quite amazing how comforting the sound of a person's breathing can become to you. Of all things, that's what I've been missing most - the sound of her breath, the little giggles and noises as she dreams - the things we normally don't notice but when they're gone they leave a void. The night is so silent without her that I can barely sleep. I'm so looking forward to her return on Wednesday.
In less than twelve months of being there, she is now Acting Head of a section spanning four departments - Finance, Procurement and her own areas of Insurance & Risk Management. This is partly due to the Dept.Head (her big boss) being away on extended leave for family reasons. An extended leave that is looking like it might be 3 or 4 months minimum!
So, instead of just being the Manager of Insurance & Risk, she is now responsible for about an extra 30 staff under a number of different managers across a range of disciplines. Most of those managers (at the same level as my wife) have been there for 5 to 10 years. Strangely, the fact they've been there so long, and my wife has been promoted above them after only 9mths doesn't seem to have bothered them much. There doesn't seem to be any snarkiness or rivalry at her appointment. On the contrary, she says they've all been wonderful.
Unfortunately, this has all meant a lot of extra work for her. She is working a lot later, getting home later and, when she finally does get home, she pulls out the laptop and keeps on working. Weekends too! She is the sort of person who revels in this type of thing. As long as she has reports to do and spreadsheets to pour over, she's happy.
She's also been away interstate about 2 weeks out of every 5 for the past two months. Currently she is at the annual Risk Management conference on the Gold Coast. She's been there since the start of the weekend. I do wonder which sleazy old Risk Manager organised a conference on the Gold Coast during Schoolies Week though. It is a bit of a boys club, which maybe explains the decision of the old perverts. But my wife is enjoying it. She was asked to present a paper on "Climate Change and Risk Management" which apparently went well. Today, she is chairing a panel with some big o'seas guest speaker.
Last week she was in Brisbane for talks with their Insurers. Before that it was Melbourne.
I am extremely happy about all this. She is really forging ahead with her career, and I'm sort of enjoying being a 'kept man' :)
It has meant a lot of changes in our life-style though, and with me being the 'house mum' all the time, it is getting increasingly hard for me to run my business. There just isn't time to do the clothes washing and ironing, wash the dishes, help with homework, cook the dinners, keep the boys from killing each other, etc etc and keep in contact with all my clients and do their work as well.
If I try to be 'house mum/dad' and 'small business owner' at the same time, it leaves me no room for writing and illustration.
So, I've been cutting back on my client roster. I've only kept those clients I have a really close relationship with, and those are generally the smarter ones who don't need hand-holding every second of the day and night. That should make things a lot easier, and leave me more room for writing.
I think the hardest thing to get used to though is the silence. When you've lived with someone for going on 18yrs it is very strange sleeping in an empty bed at night, with no one beside you. It gets where you don't notice they're there once you're asleep, but if they're NOT there sleep comes very hard indeed. It is quite amazing how comforting the sound of a person's breathing can become to you. Of all things, that's what I've been missing most - the sound of her breath, the little giggles and noises as she dreams - the things we normally don't notice but when they're gone they leave a void. The night is so silent without her that I can barely sleep. I'm so looking forward to her return on Wednesday.
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I think that within a family with kids, there is really only reasonable room for one person (be that mum or dad) to have a career. The other can 'work', but a career, it ain't. It may be old-fashioned, but I think that to have two careers in a family short-changes the kids. There has got to be one person who can, at zilch notice, drop everything and rush to school to pick up a sick kid, and care for them over the next three days without recrimination from the side of an employer, and do the same thing again for the next kid two weeks later.
Since giving up my full-time job, I, too have hovered in that self-employed, carer state, where you're never quite sure if you're coming or going.
Seeing a partner consumed by their work on nights and weekends can fill you with feelings of ambiguity. Are you missing out on something? Are you being left behind by the employment-boat? Is this cycle of overwork that burdens you with more than your fair share of kids' duties ever going to finish? When they're teenagers, are your kids still going to relate/listen to your other half? All valid questions.
I, for one, wish that Australian employers wouldn't be allowed to so easily burden their employees with overwork, where it becomes 'expected', thus forcing parents out of the race. I wish part-time work was acceptable and available for more tertiary-educated positions.
Maybe I'm dreaming. On the other hand, many European countries seem to manage just that.
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It is strange that I've been given the opportunity to just be a house-dad and spend the rest of my time writing. It is what my wife WANTS me to do... and yet I still can't quite let go. I need to feel I have some financial input, but that is getting tougher and tougher.
As to work loads and hours - I can't believe how quickly things have changed. 10yrs ago, if your boss tried to ring you out of work he'd better be a) a good friend wanting to go out for a beer or b) have a damn good reason for bothering you outside of work hours.
These days people are happy to have their mobile phone ring at all hours. They conduct business on trains in the mornings, and when they're on their way home at night. Either that, or their laptops are on plugging away at another report.
I can't understand how people have let their work lives take over their private lives.
I have always had one philosophy when it comes to things like that:
I work to Live, I don't live to Work.
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