Through a confluence of events that include, not
surprisingly, this shitty economy that was at least in part perpetrated by the
umpteen thousand idiots on Wall Street who have stolen umpteen gazillion from
our coffers, my friend and I have found ourselves depressingly unemployed and,
thus, stay-at-home dads looking for work. In other words, our wives’ bitches –
even more than we already were.
We were searching around the Internet for some blogs where
fathers in this increasingly unstable environment can gather on the Web to
commiserate about this and that, and discovered that there is a
disproportionate number of Mommy blogs compared to Daddy blogs. In fact, if you
were to take the population of China and compare it to that of Wyoming, you
might get a sense of the disparity – minus, of course, the communist aspect.
And so we decided to kick-start our own blog, share our
experiences regarding fatherhood and marriage, vent our frustrations and
generally kibitz like a gaggle of Yentas at a bar mitzvah.
The thing about being a stay-at-home dad looking for work is
that I find that I always have these conflicting emotions about my current
situation. On the one hand, I find that I enjoy immensely the newfound ability
to spend additional time with my kids, two boys who are ages 6 and 4.
In my previous profession – it’s still difficult to state
that at times because I did what I did for 20 years, and for all intents and
purposes that portion of my life is over – I traveled a lot, and so there were
many times that I didn’t get to see my kids completely grow into the people
they have become – which means my wife got to see them grow up perhaps even
more than she wanted.
Now, I take them to school. I pick them up. I take them to
the park – and hang with the nannies who are working for the fathers who are
actually still employed. I take them for ice cream. I take them fishing (and catch
nothing). I feed them dinner. And for the most part I love every minute.
But, there is always in the back of my mind the persistent
nagging feeling that I am unemployed and that I will not be whole again until I
land a job.
Isn’t that the bitch? It’s kind of like being with a really
sexy, experimental girl with whom you know you eventually won’t end up. And so
instead of fully enjoying the experience, you are kind of always wondering when
the relationship is going to end.
I wish I could just enjoy my kids 100 percent right now. The
ultimate dream would be for a potential employer to say, “You know, we’d like
to hire you but we can’t until the economy turns around. Why don’t we do this:
Sit tight for three months and I promise you we will add you to the staff after
that.”
Beautiful, right? You can kick it with the kiddies for three
months, collect unemployment and know that 90 days from now you will be earning
a steady income. It would allow you to appreciate the time with your kids the
way you did on weekends when you were actually working.
But now I have these two conflicting emotions pulling at me.
Enjoy the time with the kids. Get a job. Enjoy the time with the kids. Get a
job. It kills me, it really does.
The thing I can’t figure out is if that is my shortcoming,
or if everybody feels that way. Because really, I will probably never get this
time back in my life where I can devote a good deal of time to my kids. It
won’t be too long – hopefully -- before I am working again, and then I will be
bitching that my hours are too long and that I don’t get to see my kids enough.
And I will inevitably think back to this time and consider:
Why didn’t you enjoy that time more?
I know that I will do that. And yet I can’t stop myself from
being that way. Isn’t that wrong on some level? Shouldn’t I be able to perform
more self-control? I guess that’s why I’m a Dad and not a Mom.
