I'm the Daddy

[radegund]

So I left for work this morning and was struck by a strange thought as I hurried along the canal:

I'm the only person in my household who has a full-time job.

niallm is self-employed and glitzfrau is doing her doctorate full-time as of last month - and more power to her! Both do at least as much work as I do, but neither does it Monday to Friday, 9:30 to 5:30, in an invariable location. (My job setup is very traditional: rock-solid working hours, no working from home, very little overtime, no travel.)

The thing is, this model of employment is weird for me. My parents are both academics, so the mental map of adult work that I developed when I was growing up assumed an irregular schedule and a high degree of intellectual control over most aspects of the work (and it's not that I had a rosy picture of what the academic life entails: the hard work going on was unmistakable; midnight oil was a household staple).

The only time I've been part of a household where all the adults worked full-time was the eleven months that Niall and I lived together before he started his company. Eleven months, when set against twenty-four years, is not a long time in which to embrace and assimilate an unfamiliar lifestyle.

I feel like the subject of some sinister experiment. My weeks and months have this bizarrely inflexible - nay, Procrustean - structure, in which circumstances external to my work are considered irrelevant. The natural peaks and valleys of my motivation and productivity are artificially flattened, and the fact that it is futile to struggle against this does not alleviate the discomfort.

Meanwhile, my housemates' lives look normal to me. I'm wondering when my life is going to get back to normal.

(It'll happen. There are other ways to earn a living. I won't be in full-time employment for many more years. I'm certain of that.)

Comments

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

A very pithy formulation of a condition I've only just started to understand! Funnily enough, although my father is an academic and my mother a musician, they always worked inflexibly regular hours. Mummy left for work at half past eight, Daddy at nine, dinner was on the table and to be eaten by six and the evenings were devoted to reading and family stuff, never to work. Thus, I am only just getting used to the way of working that seems most natural to you, and am still having difficulty with pacing myself (not working all the time I could be working) and with feeling like a freak - everyone else I know is more or less nine to five, apart from the other students, and Nialler. You are the Daddy - and congratulations on having the courage!

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough, although my father is an academic and my mother a musician, they always worked inflexibly regular hours.

Interesting. Largely a matter of personality, I think. Your parents strike me as more able than mine to maintain a definite separation between work and leisure. My mother is reasonably good at this, but she also likes the flexibility that her job brings - she's happy to come home for lunch, or spend a morning in the garden, then correct essays in the evening or at weekends. My father, by contrast, is forever "on", forever struggling to keep on top of a job that won't stay put when he locks the office door - he brings essays on holidays. They both enjoy the research trip thing, though, which is where the line between work and leisure blurs, I suppose.

You are the Daddy - and congratulations on having the courage!

Wavering, m'dear, wavering!