I'm back: Memoirs of my prime earning year (singular)

Inhale.  Ahhhh....you smell that my friends?  It's the sweet, sweet smell of freedom, possibility, opportunity, comfy clothes, ponytails, home-cookin', clean kids and perfectly seasonal urns... Yes, it's the bittersweet stench of unemployment.  That's right, after 15 plum months in a cushy, high-stress, 3" heels, latte-drinking management role, I was recently "exited" due to "restructuring" (read: canned). 

Here's my story for all of you at-home Moms who have ever wondered just how green the grass is in the 25 square-feet of corporately-assigned cubicle space you've fantasized about occupying whilst being pummeled upside the head by an errant soccer ball at the playground...  It's a cautionary tale for the ages.

Let's take a little step back in time for a sec, to remind you that prior to June 2013, I was a contentedly busy at-home Mom, part-time freelance TV product expert, occasional community volunteer and full-time nag to my husband.  Then opportunity came a-knocking: the chance to jump the rungs of the business-world and (gasp!!) oversee an entire department!!  "These are your prime earning years", corporate Mom-friends cautioned me with bewilderment in their eyes as I mulled it over.  I mean seriously, who could say no?  What's there to think about?  It was an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime chance to prove to myself and all those navy-suited go-getter Moms with Nannies, that I could, if I wanted to, enter the workforce and succeed, whenever I wanted to.  And so it began...

First came all the lifestyle changes:

At-Home Kasie                                  Working Kasie
Home cooked meals                            Longos meal-deals
Maintained property                           The Gardener
Cleaned the home                               Belinda
Saw kids onto school bus                   Saw raccoons on road at 5:45am from my car
Oversaw homework                           Paid sitter to oversee homework
Kids 80% Work 20%                         Work 80% Kids 20%                          
Fit                                                       Those pants used to fit...
Desperate for adult conversation       Chatted daily with celebs and inventors
Cat puked on carpet                           Walked red carpet
Felt unimportant                                Management!
Felt unappreciated                             Management!!
Felt financially impotent                   Management!!!
Full make-up                                     Full make-up
Styled hair                                         Styled hair

Okay, so some things remained the same, but overall, it was a major seismic shift and I'm not gonna lie, I LOVED it!!  Having the "I worked all day" excuse to not pick up the slack around the home was terrific!  Plus, compared to being at home all day with the kids, work was easy!!  Get this - I even had one whole hour at lunch, to eat in peace and amazingly, I didn't have to wipe anyone's face afterwards (although that guy from IT with the perma-stubble always had bagel crumbs on his).  And, people treated me differently.  Suddenly, I was more interesting in conversations...had more to contribute.  People wanted to know all about my day, whereas I don't recall anybody every excitedly asking me about my trip grocery shopping or pizza-lunch volunteering, or grass-cutting.  Being a working-woman put me on the map as far as family pride was concerned.  Telling their friends that "Kasie works on TV" elicited the same reaction as "She married a Royal!" would have had with senior citizens (at least 2 seniors btw think I did marry a Royal). Every day in the office proved more and more challenging as my work-life balance slid as steadily downhill as a chubby kid on a crazy-carpet down glare ice (I can make chubby jokes because one of my kids is sort of chubby).  If I had a nickel for every time I feverishly-typed a work email on my iPhone at 8pm only to snap at my kids, "not now...I'm busy", I'd be rich!  Sadly, all those nickels didn't do much to easy the guilt I felt for always having to put work first - and I did have to.  I managed a team that worked 18-hours/day, 7 days/week, 364 days/year...no time for family! or vacations! or the stench of my own b.o.!  Speaking of which, all this stress led to quite a lot of sweating at work...not much airflow in 25 square-feet of office space it seems.

So, when those fateful words made their way out of management's lips and across the desk to my disbelieving ears a mere 15 months after I was hired, "you are no longer employed here", a part of me wilted and died, but right there below the surface (under my concealer, foundation and 4-in-1 pressed powder) I could feel a ray of relief.  I cried.  A lot.  Then I had too much wine.  Then I took a deep breath, two Advil and set aside my pride to tell the kids.  Yes, even grown-ups sometimes don't succeed, and fall down and get hurt too.  And it sucks, so badly!!!  My youngest who's seven, flung open the covers on his bed and tapped the sheets gesturing for me to get in.  He wrapped his soft little arms around me (kid comforting parent for a change) and said, "Mom, does this mean you can serve pizza-lunch at my school again?"

Sometimes in life, it's that little slice of the (pizza) pie that holds more importance than any title, cubicle size or any walk down a red carpet could ever provide. 

As for me, I'll be back in action, freelancing, doing what I love (like writing!!), on my terms, again soon.  In the meantime, I hope that whatever it is that you're doing in life, it feels right and works for you - because the biggest paycheque of all is happiness.

                                               

Working Kasie would hate the above misalignment...
at-home Kasie is cool with it.