Stuck

On the Search for a Part-Time Job

Some days staying home with the girls I feel completely stuck. As if I will never be able to write or have a career of any type again. I am relegated to cleaning the same mess off the counters, sweeping the same floors, loading the dishwasher twice a day, making the same mac and cheese and Dino bites, day after day after day. I will never finish my novel or be able to enter the workforce again. I’m having a mid-life crisis I think. But I have no money or time to act out a mid-life crisis other than the drinks I drink late into the night.

Now, I’m used to the every day existential crisis—what is the point to all this life? But what I’m not used to is the career crisis. The inability and hit on my self-esteem to not be able to provide for my family in the way I want to. Knowing that any job I can get is likely to pay less than what childcare costs, so what’s even the point? Is this just a tough period of life? Am I just artistically frustrated? Or is it something more? Is it a dissatisfaction with the responsibilities of fatherhood and husbandry? Or do I just need to grow up? Be a man! Or, woman, rather (for women are the ones who have done this work for millenia). Or are these just feelings floating through my brain, ones I should observe and then discard?  I’m not sure.

Some afternoons I lay on the floor in their play area, unmotivated and listless. To do anything. It’s hard to categorize the boredom, monotony, and loneliness of raising children—at least when they’re really young. Children get crazier as they get older, but you can do more things with them …I think, I hope. When they’re little it’s a lot of pushes on the swings and slow walks and pauses to pick up random rocks and wrestling to get them dressed. One day is fine. The next is awful. The next is good. So it goes. Yet the lack of a full-time job these past two years has dented my identity and sense of self more than I thought it would. And yet again, I think, this is what women have been dealing with forever. They have been the ones historically to stay home and make the personal sacrifices and deal with the domestic labor that is necessary to raising a family.

Don’t get me wrong. I love staying home with the girls … up to a point. Evangeline is four and can take of herself for the most part—and her three-year old meltdowns are less. Emerson is one and a half and cute as can be—but also a little goblin of destruction around the house—spilling cereal, taking out Tupperware, wiping yogurt fingers on the couch. I guess I just feel disappointed that at the age of 34, there is no job I can work that would cover the cost of childcare, and therefore it goes from feeling like a choice to stay home to a being stuck at home.

The seasonal job I just accepted as a beer and wine associate at New Seasons (the fancy, local grocery store in Portland) starts at $17 an hour. Every daycare or nanny around here starts at $20-25 which means that I will be losing money if I have to go to work and pay someone to watch the girls.

Then again, perhaps I am still tying my worth as a man to the $ value I can take home. Thinking my worth as an artist or caretaker or of my daughters means nothing compared to the amount of “capital” I make.

So then I get mad at society that for putting me in this position. That childcare is so expensive in the U.S. That no one values the arts or service industry workers. Then I get mad at myself. I should have pushed myself more in University I think. I’m smart, I could have become a lawyer, right? I mean, I didn’t have the motivation at the time, all I cared about was living a counter-cultural lifestyle, but now, now I could be a justice lawyer … or a director of a non-profit …or a professor… or something, yeah?

I think it all depends on what story you tell yourself. The frustrating story is: Because of my religious and educational choices in my youth to help start churches and move around and go into the arts and work in coffee, etc., there is absolutely no job I can work now that would make sense to send the kids to daycare. I am stuck. The only work I am qualified to do is bartending, barista, or working for a delivery company or grocery store. Not bad options. They just don’t seem like “Careers.” The coffee company I started in Utah is doing well, but like all businesses, took a hit during covid.

Or, is the story that I am staying home because of my feminist ideals to see my wife succeed in her career while mine takes a back seat? This is the “inspirational” story.

Or, am I staying home with the kids to enjoy my time with them while they’re young before they grow up? And, if I have to work a few random jobs bartending or at USPS or Lyft or the grocery store to make ends meet for our family, then so be it! Such is the life of a creative in this day and age after all. This the “realist” story. One that I’m sure I will not regret in the future, but do at this particular moment.

My current story is a mixture of all three stories—partly frustrating, partly a reality check, and perhaps even partly inspirational in some ways, ha.

In some ways, this stuckness has been a theme of my life. I’m always wanting to be further ahead of where I’m currently at. And yet, what I’ve realized talking with other parents recently, is that while some aspects of kids do get easier, the problems simply morph into others. Each stage is different, has its pros and cons—like life itself! You’re always on a journey, never quite arriving. Might as well enjoy it.

-Levi

P>S> For as much as I can get into my head, in these quiet moments of writing I am incredibly grateful for life. Life is messy and monotonous and beautiful and tragic all at once. Terrible things exist that have not touched me or my family and I really have nothing to complain about.

And, in case you’re wondering, this post is exactly why this Substack is called Levi’s Lost Thoughts.