I read something today that rubbed me a little wrong today. In a very nice letter from one stay-at-home mom to another and one of the points was not to forget to socialize. I am a full time working mother and let me tell ya, finding time to socialize is definitely one of the hardest things to do. And yes, it can be very isolating.
Now truly I know what the woman was saying. However, at the same time, in the context that it was written it made it seem like, now that you are no longer chained to your 40 hour a week job, you will be just home and find yourself never leaving the house and talking to only your children and your husband. As someone who still works a modified full time job, my social interactions are extremely limited (unless you count Instagram and even that is questionable). I work, so while I'm at work, you are not going to find me standing at the water cooler chatting away my day with minimal work. I'm grinding. I'm doing my job which happens to be one that doesn't involve much interaction with others unless I'm at a meeting or discussing work.
We don't even have a water cooler at my job
After my day at the office commences, the next thing I do is fly over to pick up my daughter. As we try to stick to a semi-schedule, I only get a few hours a night with my baby. I cherish those moments. I try to remember that the dishes will be there and the dog hair that needs to be swept up can wait until someone is fast asleep. It is a struggle, I don't get to clean up from breakfast and prep lunch and dinner while a two hour nap happens. All of those things get crammed into the few hours from when I get home from work before I have to send myself to bed for the next early morning.
I never look this happy when I clean... may that's because my house is never this neat. I need more cabinets!
I'm sure there are plenty of houses that are neater and cleaner than mine on a regular basis but sometimes things must wait until the weekend. The weekend where society expects that since you aren't working that you must have time to do things like have breakfast with your closest girlfriends and dinners with your college pals. Alas, you aren't doing those social things, you barely remember what your own phone ringtone sounds like because it's been so long since you've had a social call and all the unknown numbers in your phone have a different tone so that you know they are probably telemarketers.
Man this looks fun... to bad my excitement for the day was going to the Laundromat to wash blankets.
Woo hoo!! You know you are jealous ;-)
Keeping friends as a working parent is no easy task and making new ones is nearly impossible. I searched for months on end for a parent group to join up. One of the criteria I tried to look for was one that had working parents. There were plenty of groups that said, "yes, we have working parents." However once you looked at the schedule of activities for times and days to meet up you may find that you could make it to one weekend meet up every two months. Why is that you ask? Well, my dear parents (and anyone else reading this), that is because the rest of the meeting times were Monday through Friday somewhere between the hours of 10am and 3pm. I'm sorry, but what kind of working parents are you talking about?? I don't sell products through my social network or telecommute and make my own hours. I am in an office most weekdays from 8:30am to 5pm.
Grind!
So don't fret parents, it doesn't matter if you work or don't work you may find that you are feeling quite isolated. Don't let your perception of someone else's life or their advice make you feel like you've done something wrong. Being a parent is isolating until you realize that there are a bunch of other people just like you who did the best they could with the time they have and socialization was not at the top of their priority list.
