:clddrk-lghtng2: Not too long ago I posted about how my daycare numbers are going down and I didn’t wonder if it was a sign that it was time to look in another direction. In my former life (pre-husband and kids), I had aspired to become an attorney. I was going to be a career woman, not get married or have kids. Funny how life throws you a curve like a man to marry and some kids to raise to show you what’s really important.

I’m getting to a point with daycare that I’m just not enjoying it anymore. The instability of income sucks. I miss a regular, steady, dependable paycheck. The frustration of trying to deal with children that are raised so differently than the way I raise my own children can be infuriating. It’s tiring dealing with children that have a hard time understanding why they can’t destroy things here like they do at home. And my children are becoming hardened by other children much too early in their young lives.

I’ve considered taking on more mystery shop scheduling from my current employer as that is steady money and I can set my own hours. That will make sense in the short term but is not something I am interested in for the long run. It doesn’t excite me. There’s no challenge to it. No room for growth. And I miss going out of the home to work and I miss the interaction with other adults.

The law is what has always excited me. I had always said I wanted to be a lawyer when I was a kid but it didn’t change to other career paths as I got older. When I was 17 I had the amazing opportunity of spending 6 weeks in the summer at Syracuse University in a program designed for high school students. I attended classes with the law school’s professors. We spent 2 weeks on criminal law, 2 weeks on torts (civil law) and 2 weeks on trial advocacy. I received perfect scores on each of my exams, participated in a mock trial and received 2 awards for my performance in that trial. I was hooked!

When the time came to go to college my plans were laid out. I chose a school in Illinois with full intentions of going to law school afterwards in Chicago. After 2 years in the undergrad program the money dried up and I had to return home to Vermont and attend state college. I tried to make the best of it but was so disappointed. I enrolled in the schools Psychology program following the Forensic Psychology track as I hoped to go into criminal law. I was going to forge ahead with my dream. Turns out there were many Psychology and Law classes I could participate in. Yippee!! My advisor also happened to teach most of those law classes and was a consultant to the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit in Quantico, VA. He suggested to me that I consider applying to the bureau. Imagine that? Me – the next Clarice Starling!! Then there was a hiring freeze.

I all but gave up at that point. Dr. Bartol encouraged me to keep at it – get my law degree and that hiring would open up again. But I didn’t. I had met Jeff at that point and he was more of the blue collar mentality of you just get a job, any job, to pay the bills. Someone had dashed his career hopes at a very young age so he was already jaded. So I fell into that mode of survival and had one dead end job after another. Ones I was overqualified for. Ones seriously below my own expectations for myself.

When I had my children I realized I had finally found a job that meant something. I knew I didn’t want to leave them to someone else’s influences – I wanted to screw them up all by myself. That’s where daycare came in. We need 2 incomes to pay the bills and daycare fit. Truth be told I have always regretted my choice not to go to law school though. We didn’t even have Nicholas until we had been married for 3 years. I could have completed school and had my degree and then simply waited a few years to put it to use. But I let life beat me.

For the last few years I’ve been toying with how to get back out into the work force and work up to my potential and perhaps even go back after my dream of becoming an attorney. I found a school not too far from home that offered a curriculum in paralegal certification. A real, accredited school, not one that Sally Struthers is the spokesperson for, not one from the back of a magazine. It was a year long program and I could go on weekends. Excellent!!

I went to an Open House and spoke with the Admissions Counselors, professors and financial aid staff. That’s where they got me again. The price tag for the year is $15000 and I didn’t qualify for financial aid. I decided with the kids so young it would be too hard to leave them every weekend for a year anyway. But they kept sending me mailers and I never called to take myself off the mailing list.

In the mail on Monday was a new flyer. They now have their Paralegal program available ONLINE. It was like a sign. I left the mailer on Jeff’s computer kind of like an invitation to come talk to me if he dared. He did. He said he knew that I was unhappy with my current employment situation and he congratulated me for sticking with this one for as long as I have. It’s my longest job yet. Wise ass. He also said he thought it was something I should seriously investigate and that he imagined a home equity loan would easily cover tuition. He also said that maybe if I finally went after the career I wanted all along I wouldn’t’ feel the need to switch jobs anymore.

So then we formulated a plan together that takes us through the next 3 years. By that time Lauren, my youngest, will be in school and I will have my certification. It’s not law school but it’s a start. And in Vermont you can clerk for a year in lieu of law school and take the bar exam at the end of that year. I just may achieve my dream after all.

You ever have that problem where it’s been a while since you’ve blogged and you just don’t know where to start or what to really talk about? I’ve been MIA for a week now and it’s simply because I’ve been as busy as ever and a lot of my time has become consumed by my part time (that’s not so part time anymore) mystery shop scheduling job. It seems like it would be a great job, working from home, setting your own hours, but each month there are more and more problems with the independent contractors that perform these shops and even though my pay rate doesn’t increase, my time spent on this project does. And I’ve had it. I’m burnt out.

In the beginning it was supposed to be supplemental money. Extra mad money to help pay off some of our cc debt. Then I had one of my daycare parents quit her job and decided to stay home with her sons. A decision I can respect but it meant a significant pay cut for me. I decided at that time instead of filling the child’s spot I would take on more mystery shop locations to schedule. And I became dependent on the money instead of it being extra. And every month my boss would tell us if our shops weren’t in on time the client was going to pull the plug on the account and then there would be no more supplemental income. The panic and stress was increasing each and every month and this month I decided, that’s it, time to make a change.

Part of it’s just a quirk of my own personality. I absolutely hate to be dependent on other people for anything. I don’t want anyone else to be in control or hold it over my head and use it against me. It happened with my dh once, a nasty comment he made in the heat of an argument about how much I needed him and his income or I would lose my home and car and all my “things” he thought I so desperately had to have. Ever since then I have made more money than him so that he would never be in that position of power over me again.

And now I am shifting the balance of power in my favor again. I am taking charge and making some changes to the point where I will fill my 2 open daycare spots and quit my part time job. It occurred to me that you aren’t’ supposed to have a million little jobs that are all done half-assed, you’re supposed to have one big job that you make a career out of and give everything you have. I’ve been slipping lately and letting things slide with my daycare and it doesn’t make me feel very good about me or the service I’m supposed to provide. Suffice it to say there’s been a lot more free play time and a lot less structure around here lately.

It only make sense to me that those 2-3 hours I spend scheduling every day would be better spent working to improve the quality of the program I offer here in my home. I want to build my Child Care into the kind of program that everyone talks about and wants to bring their child to, simply because it’s the best game in town. I love the kids and I love teaching them and watching them learn. Now it’s time to let the rest of the world in on what a great thing I’ve got going on. It’s going to take a lot of work, and I’m even writing up a marketing plan (ack!), but it will be so worth it in the end. Today we were back to a much more structured, activity packed day and we all had a lot of fun. We also had a lot less fighting and whining and crying. They were simply too busy That’s the way it used to be and that’s the way it will be from now on.

Wish me luck!