Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Writing

Why I don’t like the term ‘working parent’

I’m new to this.

Before I was married, I worked a full-time journalism gig for 7 years, and then for another year after marriage while my husband finished his undergrad. We had a baby during that year, and I continued working full time while my husband went to school and stayed home with our daughter on the days he didn’t have class. A patchwork of volunteer babysitters from our church helped us out on the other days, and though I was technically a “working parent” at the time, it didn’t feel like a big deal. My husband made dinner and babies sleep a lot, so although my time with our daughter was limited, I knew it was temporary and she wouldn’t remember it anyway.

Then we moved to Pennsylvania and my husband started seminary and I stayed home with the baby girl, who would be followed by a baby boy a year and a half later. It made sense for me to stay home, even though our income was severely limited and we had to rely on government assistance to get by. Had I worked, we still would have had child care costs and a whole lot more stress. I know this decision is not a popular one and opens us up to criticism, but it was what our family needed to do to get by.

It would be years before we had stable full-time income, and in those years, while parenting small children, I tested the freelance writing waters. Here and there I sold an article. I started blogging to keep myself sane because writing is a lifeline for me. But parenting was my main job, and I didn’t always do it well, but I did it.

We’ve always known, at least I think we have, that when the kids went to school, I would focus on my writing and do what God has called me to do, and seek to make money at it, even if it never “paid the bills.” Phil said to me the other day that he feels like he works an outside job so that I can write. I don’t take for granted that I have a husband who supports and champions my dreams, even when I don’t have the energy or confidence to do it myself.

Photo by Negative Space via Unsplash

Photo by Negative Space via Unsplash

That’s where I find myself: with two kids in school full time, a husband working a full-time job, and me pursuing writing as both a calling and a career. For about six months, I’ve been working with a client on a memoir, which means that I am getting paid for a project that is time-consuming and demanding and a lot of fun. But it also means that I feel more like a “working parent.”

Most days, my husband goes off to work, and I get the kids on the bus, and then the day stretches out ahead of me in a rhythm of writing, eating, and housework. Okay, and some leisure. But today, that rhythm changed. I had a meeting with my client and I needed the car, so we all left the house at the same time. We dropped my husband off at work and then I took the kids to school, something I’ve never done before. Then I swung back by home because we’d forgotten to put the trash out. Knowing that this morning would be hectic, I spent part of last night printing out a copy of the manuscript for my client and making sure dishes were clean for lunches. We remembered too late, just before bed, that my husband needed work clothes washed, so into the washer they went at 11 p.m., into the dryer at 6:30 a.m. After my stop at home, I met my client at McDonald’s where we talked through some questions I had about his stories for almost two hours.

I get it, though. That’s nothing compared to what most “working parents” face every day. Also, I hate that phrase, “working parent,” because parenting by its very nature is work. It’s the hardest job I’ve ever done, and it’s endless in its demands. “Working parent” is redundant. I’ve been a working parent since my kids were born; now I’m just working at something besides parenting, or in addition to it. I’m ridiculously grateful that I can work for myself and set my own hours and pursue a craft that is mostly fun and enjoyable for me. So, that’s why I can only say that I sort of know what you parents who work at something in addition to parenting go through. It’s a teensy tiny glimpse.

I know that it’s easy for us parents to be hard on ourselves about any of our choices: to work a job outside the home, to stay home and work at parenting, to work from home and work at parenting, so can we just agree that whatever we decide to do is okay if it’s a right fit for our family and makes ends meet? That are lots of ways to be good parents and we’re all working at it the best we can?

Forget labels. Forget about the “shoulds” that other people try to place on your life and just do what you need to do. That’s what I’m telling myself today. I need to give myself that grace. Maybe you do, too.

Two things I learned from journalism that help me navigate life

If we haven’t known each other for 8 or more years, you might not know that once upon a time I was a journalist–a newspaper reporter (later a copy editor and page designer) for daily publications in small towns in Illinois. I gave all that up when we moved to Pennsylvania and I became a stay-at-home mom, so sometimes it feels like a different life entirely.

A funny thing happened last week–my name and picture made it into the local paper where I live now. It was a brief mention because I’m co-teaching a workshop at a writers conference with a talented writing friend. I didn’t realize how big of a deal it was until people started telling me they saw my picture in the paper. I guess I haven’t been as vocal about being a writer as I could have been.

A decade ago, in my hometown, it was normal (and sometimes creepy) for random people to say to me, “Aren’t you that girl that writes for the paper?” or something similar. My picture was in the paper weekly. My name, almost daily. I had forgotten what that was like. (Not that I’m looking for a repeat of that experience!)

Journalism was a difficult career for me. I’m an introvert (though I don’t know that I would have known to call it that at the time). I was fresh out of college and not particularly happy about being back in my hometown. I hated conflict and sometimes had to create it because sources or public officials were not cooperating. There were painful times when something I wrote ticked off an entire community and I became their target for hateful words. (One time I couldn’t answer my phone for a whole day because every time it rang, someone was yelling at me.) There was also one embarrassing time when I misidentified a girl as a boy. (It’s a long story but one I’ll never forget.)

Yet when I look back on my somewhat brief career in journalism (Is 8 years brief? I don’t know. It was longer than I expected to stay in the business.) I’m almost nostalgic. (But I could not do the same job today in our social media saturated world. No, thank you.) I can see how beneficial it was for me, not only as a writer but as a person living life.

Alejandro Escamilla | Creative Commons | via unsplash

Alejandro Escamilla | Creative Commons | via unsplash

Two things stand out to me, especially on days when all I see is an overwhelmingly long list of things to do in a variety of life’s arenas. (P.S. Not my real workstation pictured. I would love to return to my Mac ways.)

The first is that there is always work to do, so do something.

I can’t ever remember a time I was bored while working in journalism. Well, maybe once or twice. It was not a large city, after all. But my work was almost never done. There was always another call to make, another story to write, another idea to pursue. I hated Mondays because all I could see was the long list of unfinished work, and by Friday, I might have accomplished most of it but I could always get a jump on the next thing. Breaking news happens fast but follow-ups take longer. Feature articles are always planned ahead of time so the designers can work their magic. “Done” was a dirty word because then an editor would find something else for you to do.

It could have been so overwhelming that I just did nothing until I needed to. But I was constantly switching from one activity to the next. I would write a bit of this story then answer a phone call from a source for another story before leaving my desk to go to an interview with a source for yet a third story. Maybe I’d get back to that first story later, but I might have to take a few hours off before heading to a government meeting later that night.

Yes, I got paid and it was part of the job, but it was still stressful. I couldn’t afford to waste five minutes doing nothing if I could use that five minutes to make a call or send an e-mail.

Now, I’m not saying that being constantly busy is a good thing. It’s not. But too often I think something like this: “Well, I don’t have time to finish the dishes or do all the laundry, so I’ll just do that later.” In truth, I generally have time to start the dishes or laundry, even if I can’t finish it. And then I feel better about taking time for leisure later.

As a stay-at-home mom who also blogs and does freelance writing and serves in leadership at church, there is always work to be done. This week’s to-do list includes housework, grocery shopping, writing, buying supplies for the church kitchen, catching up on book club reading so I can lead the discussion while our pastor’s wife is out of the country and I don’t even know what else! (I recently heard this called a portfolio life. It’s an interesting concept.)

Which brings me to my second lesson from journalism: expect the unexpected.

Oh, how I hate this one! I’m a planner, and I like when things go according to (my) plan. I’m not sure how I survived journalism. Even in a small town, news breaks at the most inconvenient of times.

Like at 5 p.m. on a Friday when a fax comes into the office announcing the closure of the town’s steel mill, the major employer in town, and practically no one is available for comment but you can’t go home because you have to try everyone and the story will run the next day.

Or when you’re just doing your usual police rounds on a Saturday afternoon weekend duty and you discover a news release about a family of four who drowned when their van went into the river and you have to spend the rest of the day talking to people who are grieving.

Or on another Saturday when the president who grew up in your hometown (Ronald Reagan) finally succumbs to Alzheimer’s and the stories you’ve been holding and writing and planning for months finally see the light of day.

Sometimes all my plans got pushed aside for something else that was going on. It was the nature of the business and it’s the nature of life.

I still have a hard time with this. I look at the week ahead and think about how calm and peaceful it will be and then 3 out of 4 us end up sick or there are two snow days and three school delays and everything I thought I would get done gets pushed back another week.

Some weeks will go as planned and some won’t. Sometimes I’ll get through my to-do list and sometimes I won’t. What I’m (slowly) learning is that I can trust the Spirit to lead me through the day. As I’m writing this blog post, I could also be cleaning the house, but at this moment, blogging is helping to clear my head for the rest of the day, which will certainly have its stressful moments. Another day might lead me to tackle the organizing projects I need.

I’m good at procrastinating the work I don’t want to do but I’m learning that if I take small steps or knock off a few smaller items on my list, then I’m less overwhelmed. (I also probably need a few less hats, but I’m working on that, too.)

How do you do it? Are you able to find balance in all the tasks of your life? Have you learned something from a job or a role that was surprising to you?