A Few Thoughts About Work

The first week of work after maternity leave has come and gone. It was not as bad as I thought it would be, mainly because Joe and his mom took care of Léo. The hardest part of last week was actually letting go of thinking that I am the only person who knows exactly what Léo needs and being ok with having other people make decisions about his daily activities / sleep schedule. Work was all right. Of course the highlight of the week was seeing my friends again and being able to go by their cubes and chat. The low point was probably realizing that I might be doing this job for a few years.

Indeed, it seems that my supervisors have very clear ideas about who can get promoted. It's not necessarily "who" actually but "what it takes." In my case, 2 years abroad. I don't have that on my resume nor will I in the next few years. This means that at this point my career is at a stand still. This could be ok, but I realized last week that I don't love my job so much that I can stay put for a couple of years. Before going back to work, I gave much consideration to a part time option but decided against it because I thought this schedule would not make me a good candidate for promotion -also because my boss thought PT would not be ideal. Now I realize I am not going to be promoted anyway unless I apply for a job outside of my department. This is annoying. I like having goals and putting plans in place to advance. I feel stuck right now in a job that does pay well but doesn't really fulfill me anymore. I know my main focus needs to be on Léo and not on career at this time -but that makes me question even more the validity of going back full time.

I have always considered myself a driven person. I think I am still driven and ambitious -I say I think because I haven't focused on this topic for a while now. I want a career, but I don't want a job that just pays the bill. I could stay home with Léo -our budget would be tight but we could make it work- so work must/should be meaningful and fulfilling. Working for a humanitarian organization IS meaningful of course, but I somehow need to know that what I do is worth it, that I am leaving Léo in the care of someone else (for a quarter to half of my salary) for a good reason. This might sound whiny. Maybe my thoughts about work are very critical right now because leaving my baby to someone else is not easy and going back to some dreadful aspects of my job really annoyed me this last week.

Of course I won't make any drastic decision for a while. I will not consider any changes until Joe decides what he wants to do about school. I will however be thinking about what an optimal situation would look like -what would make me feel good about the fact that I work and leave Léo to day care- and about steps to achieve that goal. In the meantime, I will be a diligent worker and will look for opportunities to work on projects which I enjoy the most.

Sorry this post is not clearly structured. These thoughts are obviously quite new and I haven't had time to process them completely, if at all. I just needed to share what this week has brought up in terms of priorities and preferences.