Not quite so long and rambly a post

I love blogging. All that free advice, and so very wise.

OK, here's a quick update. I'm not asking for comments, really, because I think I've got to find my own way through this, and because you all came so good on the last post, I hate to consume more than my fair share of your time and thoughts (though if you have a word of wisdom, I'm always grateful!).

Turns out that instead of fundraising or library work, I should really be in negotiation. I told my current workplace that I'm looking for jobs, and have an interview in the offing, and explained why, and the net result was that they offered a fabulous package which involved:

• re-allocating one or two bits of my job which are time-consuming
• an acknowledgement that I've said what I've said about the fundraising target, so if I don't meet it, then it's the Board's responsibility and not mine, and (and this one's the gem)
• as much holiday as I like, (yes, even the 15 weeks I mentioned which is what the school hols are) so long as I fit in my two days a week around it.

I mean, blimey. Blimey O'Reilly.

Seems like something of a no-brainer*, but meanwhile, I've been getting keener on the idea of the Library Assistant job too. I didn't really know what it involved, so went to have an informal chat with the Librarian. I have an interview not this coming week (half-term), but next. I used to feel I would keep my sanity by having a life outside the school bubble, but I'm beginning to see that there is a lot of sanity to be gained by jumping into the bubble more whole-heartedly and belonging to it more fully. And I like libraries.

Incidentally, I didn't get the other fundraising job that I was interviewed for, but quite honestly, I'm not going to find a part-time fundraising job that is a better package than the one now on the table where I am. Good to rule that option out, though, in terms of the decision-making process.

So at the moment, I'm just trying to hang loose of it all, and stop spinning my mental wheels, in the hope that if I disengage my conscious mind, which is never going to reach an answer on this one, then my subconscious might come up with the goods. Go, Subconscious, go! I've stripped back the decision of all that extraneous stuff, like what will other people think, and what battles for working mothers I'm representing (the personal being political, and all that), and what role model I am. I'm just trying to feel my way into what would be the nicest life for me and those near and dear to me in the here and now, and then I know the rest will follow.

What already feels nice, is looking at July/August, and being able to make a few extra plans, without the pressure of having to zoom back from holiday or seeing family, or having to go into work while our friends from America are visiting.


* I don't want to look this particular gift horse in the mouth, but actually, it's not quite as simple as it might seem. I can't say too much (blogging never being anonymous and all that), but you'll get the gist of it if I say that in a small workplace, much depends on the personalities and working practices of a few key individuals... I won't say more than that. But a gift horse is a gift horse, and this one is laden with goodies, so I'm trying my best to avert my gaze from its open jaw - whilst also being realistic about how it might all work out in practice.

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Long rambly post in which I ask for your advice

OK, great Wisdom of the Blogosphere, help me out with this one.

The story I tell goes like this:

Husband is Chaplain in a boarding school. That's great, because it means he gets long holidays, which always match the children's holidays, and that means that I've got the freedom to take on a job and not have to worry about childcare in the holidays or half-terms. And anyway, it's not like my children are small any more. Oldest is 16, nearly 17, and next one is 13, so both well beyond holiday club ages. They just like to veg out at home, and do a bit of sport here and there. Youngest is 10, but she's pretty self-sufficient, and anyway, it's lovely for her to spend that extra time with her Dad. They're going to climb a munro this half-term (weather permitting).

It's great for me to be developing myself in a job that plays to my strengths. I like that I'm being a role model for my kids, showing that women can work outside the home, and it makes for a balanced life. I always planned to work in some shape or form, once they were a bit older. It's good to be investing for the future, and this job will open doors to other fundraising jobs as and when the children leave home. It's great to have found the opportunity to return to my previous career, and be keeping it ticking over. I like having a job outside the school, which, like any small community, is something of a bubble.

The real story is more like this:

I'm exhausted. I don't know how people do it. I'm "only" part-time and I can't fit it all in. That makes me feel terribly inadequate, because lots of couples out there have two full-time working parents and make it work ok, and as I believe I mentioned, I'm "only " part-time. And yes, we do have it easy regarding the childcare situation. It's not the domestics (though they have to be done), or the dog (who does take up at least an hour a day), or the provision of food (though with teenage sons, I do sometimes feel like I should put up an "Open" sign on the kitchen door - they need a lot of stoking), or the fact that wider family is geographically far flung and so a visit necessarily involves several days or air fares. I don't really know what it is. It's just that there isn't enough of me to go round.

The job is stressful and demanding, and leaves me with a small level of bubbling worry most of the time. Yes, I do have days when it's rewarding, and yes, I do like being in an office and having colleagues, and getting out of the bubble. However, as sole fundraiser in a small organisation where the management structure won't listen when I talk about "unrealistic expectations" (which I've been doing for months now), it's not a relaxing situation. I like the world of fundraising, but it's not a great passion, and when I left it after having babies, I always said I wouldn't want to go back. I'm not career ambitious; I've always been more interested in the rewards of the job in itself and of itself at any given point in time, rather than looking up the ladder.

Boarding school life is busy and intense in a way that's hard to explain until you've experienced it. Husband doesn't have a day off during the week during term-time, and works most evenings. In effect, we get a Sunday morning and/or afternoon together, but he's often having to prepare for the evening chapel service, or just crashes out and sleeps. I'm not complaining: it is what it is. But I have worked out that, of all the couples who live on campus, all the non-teaching spouses either work in the school in some kind of capacity, or are teachers in other schools. All bar two, who (interestingly) are men, married to housemistresses.

I don't really want to work for the school, because of a healthy desire to get out of the bubble, mixed inextricably with some kind of bolshy pride in doing my own thing. I prefer it when I say to people "Yes, I work. I'm the fundraiser for a small family centre", rather than the idea of saying "Yes, I work in the school office/school shop/school library". I suppose this means that I don't have a very healthy regard for women who do those jobs, and of that, I should be ashamed.

I do like the fact that my children have to be a little more independent because I don't have the time to run round after them as much as I used to, but I don't like the fact that I live with a perpetual feeling that I'm not quite coping. I've moved a family to America and back. How can I not be coping with a part-time job, for heaven's sake? And because I'm tired, I see that they're all tired too. I don't know how this works logically, because I'm strict on bedtimes. I just think that a child's inner life reflects their mother's. Home isn't quite as relaxing a place as it used to be, and there are consequences to that. Don't shoot me for saying so.

The denouement, with which I need your help, is this:

The position of Library Assistant in the school has been advertised, and I've applied. It's term-time only, and 19 hours a week. Do I really want it? (Of course I might not get it, and I know there've been many applications, so I'm absolutely not presuming.)

On the plus side:

• Long holidays. Fifteen weeks a year. Yay.
• I like libraries, books, and related things.
• It would be a low-stress job.
• Who knows? It might open doors to other things, for that "empty nest" time of life that I want to plan for.
• I wouldn't feel exhausted all the time (at least, I don't think so).
• The long holidays.
• The long holidays.
• The long holidays.

On the minus side:

• It would involve a pay cut, but not too significant, and one we could absorb.
• It would mean I am sucked in the vortex bubble that is boarding school life, and I might never get out.
• I feel like I'm compromising, and that somehow feels like a negative thing, rather than a positive choice. 
• I feel a failure. I don't know why. I guess it's my own demon. When I look at my cv, it reads like an impressive list of demanding jobs that I've done well in. But in each one, I felt like I was vaguely ok at it, good in patches, and when I left, felt I was leaving under a personal cloud. I have no idea why I feel this. It feels important to me to succeed at this one, even though it is (and I've said this from very early days in it) set up for failure.
• I feel a failure because women are meant to be able to do this, aren't we? Juggling. Whenever I think about it, I see how easy my lot is compared to most: a husband who has school holidays, flexible after-school care on-site, the convenience of living on the school property, "only" part-time work. I should be able to make this work (and most of the time, actually, I do - but looking down the barrel of a 9-week summer holdiay, in which I will have 2 weeks off, or 3 at a pinch, I seriously doubt that I want to make this work any longer). Perhaps I can make it all work, but it might take a few years to get there, years in which precious family life is ticking by, years which I won't get again.
• I will have to say to people "I'm Library Assistant at the school", and they will think "she only got that job because her husband is the chaplain", and I will have to swallow my pride (this, of course, might actually be a plus, not a minus!)

The other possibilities:

• I've applied for two or three other fundraising jobs, and even had an interview for one. But there are very few part-time opportunities. And it won't solve the long holiday issue.
• I've been very up-front with my current job, told them I'm applying for other jobs, and have a meeting this week with my manager, and the chairman, in which one of my strategies is to suggest I leave the job, and then work for the organisation on a consultancy basis (I'm thinking long holidays...). I think it is extremely unlikely that they will agree to this, or that it will work out very well even if they do. But I thought it was worth a try. 

OK, so what do you think? (I think I've decided what I think, by virtue of writing this post, but I'm interested, truly, in your thoughts.)

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I suffer from piles

I suffer from piles.

There. I've said it. It's not a complaint we like to discuss, but I'm opening up here, in the hope of finding support from fellow sufferers.

There are piles of paper on the desk. There are piles of magazines, and catalogues, and junk mail, and more paper on the bookcase in the hallway. There is a pile of books on my bedside cabinet. There's a pile of coins and receipts on my bedroom window sill. There's a pile of laundry on my bed. There's a pile of ironing in the kitchen. There's a pile of clean washing outside each child's bedroom door (the rule is, they put it away). There's another pile of papers on the kitchen window sill.

Every now and again I have an attack on the piles, and get rid of them. But they grow back.

I aspire to a minimalist house, where there's a place for everything, and everything has its place. Everything is away, out of sight, or tidily arranged and decorative. But I've been aspiring for several years... decades... and I think I've just got to accept that I'm just not a minimalist. How do you minimalists do it? Do you spend hours a day wandering through your clean lines homes, admiring the grey and white colour scheme, and pouncing on every stray item with lioness alacrity, before settling down to your hour of solitary evening meditation? Did you go to minimalist training school, where they rooted out all your cluttery habits, teaching you better, sleeker ways of living? Or were you born so strongly minimalist that you were able to resist the onslaught of untidiness and disorder? Perhaps you just have a lot of visitors, and therefore a high incentive to keep your house looking lovely.

I have come to the conclusion that, for me, an alternative strategy is more realistic. Instead of trying to fit my square peg self into a round minimalist hole (it would be round, wouldn't it? No sharp corners or edges, just a perfect smooth circle), I think I need to learn to love my inability to keep the anarchy of the piles at bay. I must accept that flat surfaces, of their very nature, attract things being left on top of them. I mean, at least the chaos is in piles, and not just strewn randomly around. I should learn to understand a pile of stuff not as a failing in tidiness, but as a beautiful demonstration of a busy life. I should look around and see a cosy, relaxed home, where items are able to find their own space and chill out, without fear of being hustled out of sight into an unwelcoming cupboard or drawer, or - worse still - the recycling.

Or I need to make the acquaintance of the piles fairy. How do I do that?

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A blog on the move

One of my favourite blogs is Happy Homemaker UK. She's an American mom living in the south of England. She's just about to return to America, and I will miss her beautiful posts all about English life. If you want to feel good about England, scroll back through her blog, and see all the wonderful places you can go, and all the amazing things you can visit. I wonder, has she been in the pay of the British Tourist Authority?!

To me, she has exemplified the approach that I tried to maintain, when I was living in the US and this blog was called "Not wrong, just different". Her acceptance of, and fondness for, all things British is evident in all she writes. I've found it affirming, reading her posts over the years. Yes, Britain IS lovely, isn't it?

I haven't been blogging much lately. I've got busy with other things, and I do quite a lot of writing in my job, which makes me less inclined to write at home. I was interested to hear my job described as "Grant Writer" the other day. That's an American term, which I'd not heard this side of the Atlantic before. I like it. It's not technically accurate - the job is writing applications to get grants, not writing grants. However, it's good shorthand for what is involved, and "Application Writer" really doesn't have the right ring. The British equivalent is something like "Trusts Fundraiser", or you quite often see job title variations such as "Trusts Manager", which is all wrong, as you're not managing the trusts at all. You're trying to get money out of them. Sometimes it's "Trusts and Foundations Manager" which is a case of tautology, really. I mean, does anyone know what the difference between a Trust and a Foundation is? Incidentally, they're all called Foundations in the US.

Job titles are often ridiculous, though, aren't they? I mean, what does a "Knowledge Manager" do? I remember being quite shocked the first time I heard that a company had a "Human Resources" Department, rather than a "Personnel" Department. How could you treat people as just another category of resource? Rather telling, really.

Meanwhile (since this has developed into a rambly updating-you-about-my-life kind of a post, rather than one that is coherent in any way), 16-yo is starting GCSE's proper tomorrow. Two week of an inordinate number of exams. He had his Spanish oral a couple of weeks ago, and as he left the house, I said to Husband "We have a son who's doing GCSEs. How can that be?"

10-yo has decided she's going to start giving a small proportion of her pocket money to charity, and put another small proportion in a savings account. "I'm sure I'll need money when I'm old", she said. I was impressed. I mean, most of us hardly bother to think much about our pension before the age of 40, so to start at 10 seems very responsible. "I think it will be useful to have some money saved up for my gap year, don't you?" she continued. "Old" is a matter of perspective.

13-yo is trying a dairy-free, sugar-free diet, recommended by a homeopath, to combat his hay fever. What they call in America, "seasonal allergies". The sugar-free bit is hard to get round, though he's thrown himself with gusto into the deprivation of cakes/biscuits/chocolate that it involves - all credit to him. The dairy-free bit isn't too bad. You know why? Because I am a blogger, and I know that when you need advice on these kinds of things, blogs are great resources. Thank you, blogging world, for being so full of ideas on everything from how to organise a Harry Potter party for a 10 year old, to how to cook dairy-free toad in the hole.

I hope you feel you've caught up with my life! Rambling over. I'm off now to walk the dog, and buy white underarmour for cricket-loving son.

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