Lean On Me Because I’ve Been Where You Are
Working from home.
Homeschooling one or more kids, possibly differing ages.
Significant other working from home now, too.
A bit of history…
Working from home began for me 21 years ago. It wasn’t my first choice. I wanted to go back to work because I loved my job, but I had a crushed ankle and had a newborn baby and a 5-year old and no family nearby, and the job I loved required me to stand 8-12 hours a day. Needless to say, I couldn’t go back to it. We made different choices. We made a lot of additional sacrifices.
So, I took a job working from home and raising our kids as a stay at home/work from home mom. I cooked and baked a lot, learned how to do a lot of things without a car and without Amazon. The Spouse worked about an hour away at the time and my daughter was in kindergarten. Fast forward 4 years and home schooling became another new normal for us at the suggestion of one of my daughter’s teachers.
My son was in kindergarten by then. I was still working from home. I had flexible hours, but still had to put in my 6-8 hours a day. We still only had one car and we still didn’t have much money. And most home school material at the time was religion based, so I had to put together my own materials and get real creative. Online learning wasn’t a big thing at the time and there wasn’t a lot out there. The support system was extremely small and in a lot of cases, non-existent.
When we moved to North Carolina from Florida, things really weren’t much different. We had two cars and a bit more money, and I didn’t work for that other company anymore. They went out of business and I took the plunge into romance writing. There was a lot of home schooling red tape in North Carolina that there hadn’t been in Florida, and I was still putting together most of my own material for lessons. Home school activities primarily took place on the other side of the city and we made the trek quite a bit, but were still pretty much on our own.
I say all this because some people now do feel as though they’re on their own. They’re isolated in their homes, can’t get together with friends or family, kids are home and they’ve been plunged into the world of home schooling. Now, the advantage is that teachers are preparing the lesson plans, online learning is lightyears ahead of where it was when my kids were doing it, YouTube lessons and instructions are plentiful, and there’s a lot more accountability. But I know it isn’t easy.
If you’re not used to being at home, or being at home with everyone else at the same time for more than evenings and weekends, or being working from home with others also working from home and schooling from home, or whatever the variation is that you find yourself in, it’s hard. It’s an adjustment. It takes time to find a new normal and new ways of doing things. And if you’re living arrangements are such that it feels as though you’re stepping on each other and can’t get any space to breathe and collect yourself… I get it. It’s not an easy thing what everyone is being asked to do right now. I made conscious choices to go that route for the most part, but… The one that really threw me for a loop was when The Spouse started working from home full-time while I was working from home writing and home schooling our son. My whole day to day routines were shaken up and I floundered. A lot. After more than 15 years of having a routine, it was shaken up. Much like everyone’s is now.
There’s a new normal to adjust to for the next few weeks or months. There’s a new way of processing life for many people. This is my normal, though I’m used to there being more flour and yeast and milk and toilet paper and meat in the grocery stores than there is now, but for the most part, this is my normal. My kids have been able to entertain themselves because they were raised that way, they were raised to not have others around all the time or a boatload of activities to entertain them, so, they’re doing well with this. But I know a lot of others aren’t. It takes time and it takes patience that can be in short supply. It takes hiding out for five minutes in the car or the closet or around the back of the house. It sometimes takes screaming into a pillow or putting in earbuds and listening to your favorite song so loud that it drowns out everyone and everything else for 3-4min. It takes getting creative. It takes support and luckily for most, the support is there. The world has come together online to support each other. That’s something I and a lot of others who have lived this life didn’t have. We were always the ones looked at as odd and strange and why would you home school when you could have your free time with kids in school or more money by getting a job or… Well, this is a good reason why, it seems. What you’re going through now, I’ve already been through. I’ve already done it and with less support. I’ve already done it and come out the other side with resilient kids, a relationship that survived, and…a coffee addiction, but that’s a whole other topic.
So, if you find you need someone, I’m here.
