Since early in my career, I have been saying, I'm not going to wait for my eventual retirement, but take a year here and there to focus on family and leisure and hobbies and growth and learning and fun and my relationship with God and travel and adventure and all those things we wait for until "someday." My last attempt was in 2003, while I was completing my masters. I lasted five months before I had fallen back into full time employment. This time, I am completing my doctorate. So some of that learning time will be diving deep into my dissertation, and really being able to focus on it. I may sub a bit, or teach music lessons, or even find a part-time teaching or admin post, but I am going to resist falling into a full time gig, until the next academic year, when I will be on the market for school directorship or superintendent position.
In the meantime, I am going to try to get to know my wife and sons again--to give them each the kind of sustained and focused attention they deserve. At the same time, I will attend to my mother, currently in nursing facility on hospice, with sustained and quality time, and to my mother in law, who is suffering from a pretty severe dementia, adjusting (poorly at present) to the loss of her husband and her recent move to an assisted living facility. It's a wonderful, truly sumptuous setting, with a caring staff, but she keeps calling and wanting to be picked up from "this hotel." As a family, we are reeling from the illness and loss of my wife's father, and the weight of responsibility managing the trust and the estate, and the care and best interest of my mother in law, and on a separate caption, my mother. Add our own financial lives, and that starts to sound like a full time, though unpaid, accounting job on its own. I am looking forward to having the time and attention for these things, and more importantly for these people: my own family.
I'm worried about reentering the job market after a year of, well, I can call it what I like but it is unemployment. I'm worried about making ends meet as we dip into our savings to meet living expenses for the next year. I'm worried about health care. I'm worried about the impact this will have on my eventual retirement, notwithstanding the early career promise I made myself.
Despite that worry, I know in my heart that this is the right move for my family. We came back to the states to care for our parents, and it is time to get serious about that. I have had my nose to the grindstone working 60 hour weeks for the last eleven years, and shouldering the responsibility of being "the principal," that does not go away on weekends or vacations. I'll be honest, I've enjoyed it, and I've accomplished much good for the institutions I have served. But, for at least a little while, I'm ready for a break! This year is going to be a coarse-grained way of achieving work-life balance. I've approached my career as service to others. This year, I'm going to serve my own family, and yes, my own heart, soul, and self as well. It's time for that.
Wish me luck!
