I'm out of writing juice.
My new reporting job is sucking it out of me. It's also being rather gluttonous with my emotional and physical well-being.
I sent some videos of baby Max to his daddy out to sea, and they inspired him to protect what he could see as the results of a good, strong mother-son relationship. He said that I could quit my job and that he would keep working hard to support all of us.
To say I was relieved would be an understatement. On "E" in my articulation tank, I can't adequately describe what I felt to have been given that gift. It's something for which I had been praying about six months into my pregnancy, and now Max is almost 5 months old.
I also have no words for how difficult it has been to consider really quitting my job.
Lots of people are telling me lots of different things, which is turning my brain into utter mush and spurring my already manic tendencies. My bosses are begging me to stay and insisting that I just need to give it more time to feel settled and qualified in this beat. My mother is dead-set against me giving up a career for which I've paid so many dues.
I think my boys are leaning toward me quitting. My teenager Gabe found the most gentle way he could to tell me that I've been a raging bitch the past several weeks. Max just clamors to be nursed more often.
My identity has been wrapped up in newspaper for so long that it is far more challenging to jettison it than I ever had imagined. I have clear pictures in my mind of what kind of mother, wife, daughter, sister, cousin, auntie, friend, and community member I could be without the stress of a professional job. But I go back and forth several times a day.
My litmus test has become: "Do I really need this kind of bullshit in my life?"
The question is easily answered with a resounding "hell no" upon cranky emails from coworkers, standing in the damn rain at assignments, or typing a story with one hand while the other hand is desperately trying to guide a boob into a screaming baby's mouth.
Yet these "well maybe" answers keep creeping in. A story, typed with one or two hands, sometimes turns out really well, and it's hard not to be proud of it. A reader will thank me, or I make a really interesting new acquaintance. Suddenly laundry and bottle washing don't seem that glamorous, or even necessary.
I have more than 100 pairs of shoes in my closet, and I haven't found the walking ones just quite yet.
It really sounds like you've made up your mind and maybe you're asking for a kind of permission to do this. But I don't think you're the kind of woman who goes around asking people for permission, typically. There are major risks -- it will be hard to get back into newspaper journalism if you leave it, and certainly VERY hard to do so at such a high level -- but of course there are also major rewards of the sort that can dramatically improve your current quality of life. What I know about you: whatever you choose, you'll make it work beautifully. You'll get no advice from me, except maybe this: Do what you already know you're going to do and stop being all Hamlet about it. :)
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