Same. I was perhaps actively dying while working? Literally do not know how the US population survives.
6 Likes
I was so, so close to thriving territory (4k! House! Summer of fun!) and now I’m likely losing my job, town, savings, and support system in one fell swoop.
So no job, no house, no 4k, no liquidity, no friends, and no summer of fun. Maybe in a year. But my entire adult and parenting life has been built around an academic lifestyle that I may never have again, so there will be a lot of reorienting between now and then.
16 Likes
I have this thought too, though it’s generally revolves around how to get dinner on the table for everybody.
Like - I get home ~ 5:40 pm, which is already cutting my workday short. I need to change clothes, unload the dishwasher, make dinner, and ideally have everything on the table by 6 pm when everyone else comes home. I barely cook (we live off of Trader Joe’s packaged salad and frozen foods, sometimes I’ll make chicken in the air fryer or make a stir fry). And half the time I’m not 100% done when the kids are home and it’s a shitshow and I don’t know what the answer is.
Well, I know what the answer is - I need to meal prep and do more on weekends but it’s not like I have spare time on weekends either…
@Bernadette I didn’t get anything more than this done while I was on maternity leave either so 
. My husband, who had a very different upbringing, tells me that his parents just let the kids cry while they did what they needed to do.
7 Likes
Wait what! What’s happening! Is this a journal update I missed?!
4 Likes
@frogger I don’t know if you have a journal so I’m not up to date but that’s so much!! I can imagine you are reeling. My spouse left academia (tenure track position) abruptly a few years ago, two months before our kid was born so if you want to talk to someone who has been through something similar send me a PM.
6 Likes
I’m so sorry. I hope you have some moments of peace in this next year. This sounds so so hard.
4 Likes
No journal update. We have an absolutely enormous hurdle to climb to save our beautiful little college and if not, almost everything I’ve built up in the last nine years—community, tenure, my friend network and my daughter’s friend network, all the money I just put into a down payment—is gone in a blink.
14 Likes
I’m so sorry, that sounds like such a loss in so many ways.
2 Likes
I get around this by voluntarily starting my work day at 6:30 am. I hate it, but it’s the only way to have my day done in time to do the things that need to happen between the end of the workday and bedtime for the girls.
6 Likes
Ugh. That I don’t want to do 
.
It takes us a full hour between getting up in the morning and getting out the door (including breakfast for the kids) + 30 min for the commute (which includes drop-off). Hopefully as the kids get older we can speed this up, or it can be handled by one person so we can take turns getting to work a little earlier.
3 Likes
Some of you are setting the bar awfully high.
4 Likes
Yep. I start at 6am and work until they wake, get them to school, work till they come home, sometimes work a little when they go to bed depending on the season. It’s not ideal but I don’t have to do a lot of working when they’re home and awake. It’s a trade off.
4 Likes
I’m sorry, Frogger. That is so, so awful. Any way we can be supportive to you? Can I buy you both ice cream (at the very least)? I feel like that’s a stupid thing to offer but also can’t be there in person to be an actual friend.
8 Likes
This sucks so hard. I’m really sorry and I hope that your college can be saved.
1 Like
Sheesh. I thought starting at 7:30 was bad. Anyway ravioli wakes up at 4 so I’m doomed
4 Likes
I work for a manufacturing plant and the factory starts at 6am anyway. I’m lucky that my commute is just a roll out of bed to my desk in the corner!
4 Likes
Worried now that my post came across as like, trying to win the Worst Morning Olympics. Sorry about that!!! I just don’t sleep a lot so I don’t have a good filter!!!
5 Likes
Oh no lol not at all! I just meant that for my industry it’s kind of a normal shift so they don’t mind it and I’m an early bird anyway so it works. If those things weren’t true, I wouldn’t make it either!
3 Likes
I could probably get my company to agree to a 6am start. But not my husband. Lol
7 Likes
Well, I was so underwater that I missed this conversation so that’s my answer.
We are playing on easy easy mode but several times a year something knocks us into survival mode. Currently crawling out of husband’s fractured bone and its repercussions.
I’m liking my mix of 4 desk days (plus nap times on Mondays). Right now my job is partly strategy so I can think about things on that 5th day. Work travel every other month or so scratches the travel itch. Husband has historically been a workaholic but he’s put good guardrails around his time. We both worked 2 late nights this week already (mine for volunteer stuff) and it feels like too much.
The most sublime moments tend to happen in the middle of weekday chaos, so I’m trying to slow down and savor them. Laughter on the ebike commute, silly moments post-bath, 3yo inquiries about the world, that time TR accidentally turned on the jacuzzi without enough water and created a car wash in the bathroom.
Only caring about 50% of the kid stuff that Instagram says I’m “supposed” to helps. We haven’t remembered a show and tell in weeks. Baby #2 does not have his diapers or all his feeds tracked in an app. (This only works bc he’s generally in good health.) For friendships, I tell myself some is better than none to get over the anxiety of replying to texts 3 days late.
I caught up with an old friend who asked how old our kids were. She took it in and simply said, “Oh. You’re in it.”
For chronic/long term changes (like husband’s heart things) it seems to take 1-2 months for our routines to absorb the changes. Now that I know that timing, patience is easier when new punches come in.
Everything is temporary and we’re all just kelp waving in the sea of uncertainty.
14 Likes