I am tremendously fortunate to be in the position I am in. I have a loving wife who has a proper career that is able to support my wonderful family. This has allowed me to be a Stay At Home Dad for the last 12+ years. I’ve been able to work, more or less, when I want to and in positions that allow me to continue being at home for our kids. We don’t have to spend a large portion of our income on day care, or whatever the equivalent for older kids is. We don’t have to turn our kids into “latch key” kids.
That said, I must admit that it’s really nice to have a job. It gave me something to occupy my time doing something I was good at, AND give us some extra money for the niceties in life, such as the big screen TV, Playstation 3, and Disneyland vacation it bought us. It allows me to be generous during gift giving occasions, and it allows me to spoil myself with Sushi whenever I get a pang for it, and meals “out” for my family whenever I don’t want to cook, or we’re all in the mood for something in particular.
It’s nice to have a job for those reasons, and so it sucks to lose a job. Because of my fortunate position as the stay at home dad who doesn’t NEED a job, I can take a break, weigh my options, and look for a job that suits my schedule and my needs. Sure, we won’t be able to be as care free in our spending as we once were. This could be considered belt-tightening to some degree, I guess, but since the belt won’t need to be tightened all that much, it shouldn’t hurt too much.
So, I’m taking a break. I don’t WANT a job right now. I’m actually very glad to let FlashTalk go. I’ll miss the money, but that’s pretty much it. I won’t miss learning about new services from our customers who call for support on them. I won’t miss the lack of back office tools to do my job efficiently. I won’t miss the angry customers who feel they deserve full refunds when their computer crashes for problems it had before our software. The list of the things I won’t miss is quite long, as I’m sure you can imagine. I’ll miss the interaction with some of the people I worked with, but in all honesty, I can interact when them whenever I feel like it. Most of our interaction was via IM clients anyway. Missing the money is the primary reason I’m even considering my options for future employment. I’ll miss being able to spring for the pizza after a big game of Lazer Tag with my friends. I’ll miss being able to front the money for cool shirts, conference hall reservations, and lots of other stuff I was able to do for people who share my hobbies in the area.
Assuming I get tired of missing this extra money, the next question will be “what do I want to do?” Some of the options that have crossed my mind include: delivery driver, lazer tag party business, retail grunt, and yes, even tech support. I wouldn’t mind a mindless job where I’m just trying to get to the end of the day when I come home and that’s the end of it, but I know from experience that those jobs become very tiresome as well. I did “retail grunt” twice in my life already. It also takes a lot of hours at such a job to match the salary I was getting with FlashTalk. I’m GOOD at tech support, but I really don’t like it that much. Unfortunately, even if I wanted a tech support job, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to find one that pays decently that I could do part time, or another one I could do from home, whatever the pay.
Good thing I’m not the one supporting the family. It’s no wonder Ingrid is so stressed. My challenge is getting some of my lack of stress to rub off on her. 😉 Anyway, I’m happy to be in this position. I can consider my options, and basically keep my eyes and my options open for the job that fits my criteria. I’m sure my thoughts on this will appear here from time to time as my journey continues.