Making time work for me is a major challenge

I’ve been spending a lot of my commuting time lately thinking about the amount of time I spend with my kids, and how best to balance that against my requirement to provide for them, through making a success of my career and my personal self.

I should start by saying that I’m an ambitious person – I don’t want to simply do a job for 8 hours a day and for that to be the end of it.  I have nothing against people for whom that situation works – truth be told I envy it a little for its simplicity – but for me, I need more.  I need a career, with continuing opportunities to learn, grow and do and be more.  I need to feel as though I have a purpose and some control over how what that purpose might be.  The issue here, is how far I go with this drive, and still maintain the involved and close relationships I want with my children.

I love my current job, I really do.  After a couple of years of a job I knew had a shelf life and limits on how far I could go within that organisation (but still offered some valuable experience, it wasn’t all bad), I was fortunate enough to be approached about a new role with a bigger and more successful organisation within the same field.  It was the perfect opportunity for me and I was excited to take it on.

What it has meant though, is that I have spent a lot more time focussed on work, and indeed at work.  A by-product of being someone who wants to be successful is that you don’t simply clock-on, work and clock-off.  My hours now are longer and my time spent at home has reduced.  Where I once was leaving the house at 8am and returning about 5.45pm, I now leave about 7.15am and get back about 6.30pm – 7pm.  I often then have anywhere from 1 – 3 hours work which I do after dinner, and can thankfully do by remote connection to the office.  I choose to do that work that way so I can be home to have a bit of a muck-around with Leo and tuck him into bed.  Gus is too young yet to have a regular routine, so I see him every night when he wakes for a feed and we have a cuddle on the couch most evenings also.

On top of working longer and harder – in a job I love and with a company I can see a strong future and opportunities with – I’m also trying to do a couple of uni subjects each semester, including this one.  I have 6 units to go before I finally finish the qualification I started 9 years ago, and have been doing part-time by correspondence for the last 5.  To do this effectively, I’ve been trying to spend one evening a week in the library after work, but what it means is that I don’t get to see my boys that night, and potentially not see them awake for 36 hours.  I don’t like that, and often I choose being at home over studying, to the detriment of my study success.

It’s fair to say that I am battling a little with what kind of father I can be – one who is home a lot more but enjoys work less, or one who enjoys his work and is successful, but spends less time at home than he’d like.  In the tradition of those who do try and eat the cake they have, I am going to try and chart a middle road – being home most nights, but working hard and studying hard in the time I am away from home.  It sounds easy, but it isn’t, and I haven’t yet made it work.

I need to get the career vs. home life balance working a bit better before the boys are at an age where they acknowledge and remember absence more than they do now.  It’s going to be tough, but I am determined to make it work.

Today I pause and remember a man no longer with us – my father.

Today is Dad’s 46th birthday, but sadly, he isn’t here for it. Eleven years ago, he succumbed to the black dog and took his own life.

I miss my Dad every day, despite the passage of time. There are little moments where I catch myself out: the smell of a meat pie and sauce, or seeing a newspaper with a half-completed crossword, or a dog-eared pulp novel thrown on a passenger seat, and so many other things. I can’t ever really relegate my Dad to being a relic, because even 11 years later, there are things too fresh and a little raw, that stop me consigning him to the memory bank.

As a new father myself, my hatred for my father’s elected demise has grown more intense. Yes, I have heard all the reasons and explanations about what drives someone to suicide and I get the chemical imbalance side of it all. But, when all is said and done, there had to be a moment where he realised he’d be leaving his kids (I know there was, he wrote a note) and chose to ignore that enough to inflict his own death on himself. That decision – and it was an active, conscious decision – is why I hate him so.

He would have been a good Poppy though (I know he’d have taken that moniker, after his own father who Dad lost when he was 24). He was much more traditionally masculine than I am so he’d add that element. He was smart with car engines and a great country footy player, too. He’d be a good grandfather and Leo is the poorer for not having him. Actually, not the poorer, just different. I’m not sure you can be poorer for never having had something, as opposed to having it and losing it.

I look at my boy and the fun he has with his three remaining grandparents and I curse my father for his choice.

Despite these feelings, I do wish my Dad a Happy Birthday and I again ask him to watch over my family and me and keep us safe from the frailty of the human mind. That much he owes us.