I am a date person. There are a lot of things that I so easily forget–where did I leave my phone/my keys; oh damn, the fridge is yelling at me for leaving it open; how did this box of berries get here; why are there dirty diapers on the kitchen floor; did I leave the stove on; shoot, my clothes smell because I forgot to move them to the dryer yesterday; I know I took the boys to school, but did I actually drop them off?–I should check the car, just to be safe (i’ve always successfully gotten them to school & out of the car, and have never forgotten them in the car, but I do have to think about things like that, because I forget and get distracted by little things or random thoughts)–but dates! Dates are something that I remember. It’s always been the case, well at least since September 21, 1995, when my first recollectable traumatic experience happened. But this is not about Skittle.
There is one date in my life that became a critical epoch, and I cannot for the life of me recall what date that was. It is incredibly frustrating!
My memory recalls it happening a few days before my birthday last year, but I have reason to believe that it may have occurred one year ago tomorrow. Tomorrow is the anniversary of Rex’s first time in a privately piloted airplane.
My dad flew that plane. It was a nice night. We were supposed to do a few night landings, but upon the first one, there was an equipment malfunction–nothing too serious. It was just the landing light, which made landing at dark more challenging, and wasn’t really worth the risk even if Rex & I hadn’t been in the plane. Don’t get me wrong, I was very nervous. The first landing didn’t stick, we bounced, and I watched the very pleasant-looking ground fall into the distance as we went back to try to get there again. And Rex was in the plane, and Leo was with my mom.
Fortunately (and not that I had any doubts that we wouldn’t), we made it safely back down to the Earth’s relatively dense ground.
Why did I take my 2 year old on a plane ride like this? Well, covid was still at its initial heights, and we needed to go home soon, so taking a private plane was potentially the safest option, thus, I wanted to do a trial with the 2 year old before committing to six hours.
I think that this is the night, May 1, 2020, that after I got the boys to sleep and my mom was in her late-night flower-power class–she studies herbal medicine–that I had the first one-on-one talk with my father in the entire time i’d been there (since March 16th).
Recall from previous posts, that before I’d gone up to Chicago during covid, I was most-certainly in a state of postpartum depression. I didn’t talk about it much, and in fact, I think that this chat was the first time I’d talked about work or life in the entire seven weeks I’d been there–or at least talked about it all honestly. Perhaps he asked the right questions, or perhaps I already knew I needed more information.
I was embarrassed to talk about how hard I felt life was and how hard I felt life was with the balance of my job and two young children. I can still feel the anxiety of pulling the courage to ask him the questions that I needed answers to.
I’d spoken with my little brother a couple days prior (by the pictures, it looks like that was April 26th, so perhaps May 1st, is the right date), and he answered some of my questions that allowed me to build the courage to ask the expert–who would no doubt, because he is my father, understand or at least empathize as well as know my capacity.
I standby the statement I made in my first posts just under a year ago. I loved my job, and i was good at it–good enough that I’ve had discussions with *two of my previous employers about implementing some new software projects. I haven’t told you about the one yesterday yet. That will come.
There were frustrations in my job in that I couldn’t solve ever-so-obvious problems because I lacked the skills to do so. The mundane, manual tasks of my everyday job that I knew could be solved with some diverged training–in software. Knowing even a little software would make me all that more efficient at solving the problems of my job.
Ok. Yes, I’d wanted to learn software for several years before it came to this, but I’m also beating around the probably very obvious bush.
I still feel like I’ve failed in some capacity–I should have been able to do it all, but the truth is that when you become a mother or a parent, that life gets a lot harder, and you don’t know that until it happens. #$&#$@!
I never minded the late hours or working on weekends–i still don’t, and there’s evidence of that in my commit history–but with both Keith & I being in essential 24/7 present-on-site roles, the stress came from needing to be at the plant when I couldn’t be, because I was needed at home. It came from having to swap our four-month old baby (Rex in 2018) from Keith’s car to my car at the plant’s parking lot on a Sunday, because we were both needed on site and then having to leave the place where my immediate presence was still very much needed, so that Keith could check in on where he was needed. This was not every weekend and there was only one child-swap like this ever done, but the need for us was frequent and regular.
There is a reason why the work demographics will never match the national demographics, and that is because some percent of the 58.2% of the nation become mothers. I am in no way saying that because a woman is or could be a mother that she can’t become an engineer or a pilot or a doctor or an astronaut, but I am saying that she may choose to not be required to be away from her babies. I loved my job, but there were times I resented it, because it took me away from my babies.
But this is not a political blog; that’s just something I’ve wanted to get out in response to a post I’d read on facebook, so I’m responding in an extremely passively aggressive way where the poster will never actually see my response.
But no, this blog is about a date. This is about the epoch of my current journey, which I believe t=0 was a year ago tomorrow night.
And wow! I’ve learned so much! So much about software and the internet and servers and life and how all of this ‘stuff’ interacts both directly and indirectly with the general population. And how it can go wrong, and how I can help to implement my skills from my former industry into this one–which is pretty incredible!
I don’t know who’s reading this–except for my dad and maybe my brother, but if you’re neither of them and you’re interested in learning software, don’t think that this is an easy out of whatever you are currently doing.
First of all, it is an incredibly emotional shift. The shift itself is emotion, but the ride is equally as emotional. Remember, my goal was six months to a year. That year officially ends on the date of my first post, which was May 13, 2020.
Well, I’m almost at a year from my first post, and tomorrow I will exceed the timeframe goal of my apprenticeship.
I am not happy about this, but I’m okay about it.
This was not the easy way out. I never expected to have ‘free time’ or to be off on weekends or nights (i mean $%*#, it’s 10:30PM on a Friday right now). Relatively, this experience has probably been more time-consuming than my previous job, but honestly that was kind of expected too. I’m learning, and learning takes a lot of time, especially when the amount of information takes massive processing power.
It works for me, because even though it consumes more time, I can still be around when necessary. I don’t have to be planted (at the plant), and when Keith must be, I can make arrangements to be home and work later hours into the night or over the weekend if the boys get sick or there’s a hurricane.
Even with the, hopefully, temporary feeling of failure, I believe that the talk that I had with my father one year ago tomorrow (–probably) led me to make one of the best decisions I’ve ever made for myself and my family, and I will continue to pursue this full throttle until I get there.
Perhaps last week, my own personal landing light was out too causing me to misjudge my distance from the runway. Upon attempting to land, I bounced, and so I had to pull up again. I’m going around right now getting ready to line it up again for a smooth landing.