I've got a steady job, telecommuting, with a reasonably OK salary. I was earlier required to go to the office twice a week, but now I'm told I can just stay home all week and work. That's great, tells me everyone who hears about it.
I've got a job which I'm not really enjoying. I'm sitting at home all day, whole week, with not a soul to talk to. I sign in at 9 in the morning, take a 15 minute break at quarter to ten when I bathe my son and quickly get him dressed so that he's ready to be picked up by his daycare help. I go back to my work, eat my breakfast at my desk, take another break of half an hour for lunch. This, sometimes runs a little longer. through with lunch and back to the machine, a bit of online chat sometime till I break for tea (usually for the two mins it take to make tea). Then back to staring at the silly screen till 6:30, when I hear Anant screaming downstairs. That's when I really turn to a human voice after more than 9 hours of work. It's stressful sometimes, boring often and so tiring always.
Then there is the issue of the holidays. The website needs to be updated every single day. TV serials are on even on a Friday, a Saturday, a Christmas, a Diwali, a Dussera... you name the holiday. Our team works through these days. People take turns, someone working on one Saturday, another one sacrificing his Dussera. I don't. I can't. Whenever it's a holiday for Anant, I just can't work. Anant is a restless child. He won't sit idle (oh yes, he's watching a bit too much TV these days, but I don't think he'll watch TV the WHOLE 9 hours any given day, neither would I allow him that). When he's home he needs me to read him books, tell him stories, answer his queries, play indoor cricket with him, place orders at his make-believe restaurant and drink his imaginary nimbu-pani in his toy glass. I must sit with him while he eats, tell him stories, feed him. I must lie down with him when he needs to sleep, pat him, even slap him coz he is sleepy but 'not sleepy'. So, I CAN'T work on a day when Anant is home.
Which means I can't work on a Saturday or a Dussera or any other day when his daycare is closed. Which, of course, may not go down well with others in the team. Though they always say they understand and it's OK, I, sometimes, feel it's not really that OK. Especially when I get an SMS on a Saturday morning saying 'hope you r enjoying your holiday', or when I get a call on 2nd October, asking me if I "have taken the day off" when it IS an official off and I was never asked to work on that day.It's on such occasions that I wonder if I should move on. Move on to a job where no one is required to work on any holiday.
But then, I have my constraints. My time, which is so bound with Anant. I wonder what's wrong there. I remember bosses from my previous job telling me how I will always remain on a plateau till I devote more time to work. How, in my work review, they had expressed their hope that "now, that your son has grown (Anant was just around three at that time), you will be able to devote more time to work", when I was already working till two in the night to compensate for my rushing home exactly after eight hours.
And then I shudder, I don't want to go through all that again. I don't want to live with that double guilt of neither giving enough time to Anant nor to my job. I wish I had a job with an office somewhere nearby. A job, for which I could leave my home at nine thirty, be at office at ten, leave office at six thirty and yet be back with my son by seven. That's a dream, that's what I long for. But for now it's confusion that rules my life.
