Success

I’m loathe to divide my life into pre and post kids but it does sometimes feel like the easiest distinction. It is slightly easier in my case, as I didn’t return to my job after my girls were born, so the division could very easily be before and after work. Not that what I do now isn’t work of course, but the perception of my life is and I think you’ll understand what I mean.

In my work life, I was averagely successful. I made a lifestyle choice when I met J, I could have continued on with my career as a retail manager, running bigger and more successful stores but all of those stores were much further away and, truth be told, I liked finishing work and hopping on the train, knowing that I had a good three or four hours each evening to relax and enjoy my home and my relationship. There were times within my career when I could have really gone places, really developed and there were times when things were really quite ropey, so I think, on the whole, it all balances out.

I loved my last job. I worked for a well known lingerie company that sold other bits and bobs,which I won’t name but you don’t need to be Agatha Christie to work it out. I had a fantastic team of people that I genuinely considered to be friends and it was a challenge. My job was added to and enhanced and I felt supported and excited by my bosses, it was a fun job, not different every day but different enough that I nearly always wanted to go to work. Telling my friends there that I was pregnant and then that there were two babies is genuinely one of the highlights of my life.

I regret often not going back. Not because I have ever regretted being with my girls, not at all, but because there is no barometer to success when you don’t work outside of the house. Nobody cares if your toddler is potty trained or when, there’s no performance related bonus, there’s far too much time and not enough time in equal measure, time spent staring at the walls in silence wondering if your babies are deeply enough asleep to risk turning the telly on, while you’re pushing your children in the pram along the seafront in an attempt to pass even a little time in an interminable day, the days when you realise that it’s two o’clock in the afternoon and you’ve not only missed breakfast, but lunch too.

The idea of talking to a stranger now fills me with dread now. I ramble to strangers if I d find myself needing to talk to someone, yet i crave having a conversation with someone new. I’d love to have just a little of my old self back for a few minutes, I’d like to briefly remember what it feels like to be respected and listened to. I wonder how I’ll feel next year, after the baby is born and old enough to go to my sister and to nursery and I do have to return to work, what will I say in an interview, that for four years, I have loved my children beyond measure, that I am more patient and grounded than I have ever been, that I will bring a level of maturity to a role that I simply did not have before.

Most likely I’ll say the wrong words and get laughed at.

Hey ho!