It's Wednesday, and I am just sitting down to post at the time I'm usually hitting "publish." As always, life is complicated, and it starts pouring when I am halfway home, and right when you are starting to get comfortable with the way things are something happens to shake it all up again and you have to start the "getting used to it" process all over again.
Date night is experiencing some turbulence lately. Not so much internally, and if it was I guess you wouldn't expect me to share it on the blog anyway, but thanks to factors outside of our control, J. and I are having to reevaluate.
The coffeeshop of lore, Bishop's, where we met, has been uprooted and is now a one-man baked goods supplier run out of a home kitchen. For awhile J. thought he was going to be without a job, but then the people who are taking over the space said they wanted to keep him on as part of the startup team for the new place. Which to me sounds like a great opportunity, but also comes with a heavy load in terms of time, energy, and expertise.
In my entrepreneurship classes in college, we always talked about what huge investment is involved in starting a new business. It's more than a full-time job, and obviously tends to require a lot of financial capital, and you also have to be extremely well-prepared with a business plan, some projection of how things are going to pan out (hopefully supported by at least a little market research), a certain degree of knowledge of the industry and good business practice in general.
But you don't really get it until you or your significant other is working 13- to 16-hour days, and when he's not actually at work he's tired and stressed out and distracted. You don't really get how much of a sacrifice it can be to follow your dreams (if opening a business is a dream for you, as it has been for me since I was 13 or 14) until you start to feel the repercussions on other areas of your life, outside of work.
And here's what really gets to me, as I'm recognizing this latest embodiment of the ripple effect.
I have a friend who recently got a 9-to-5 job just as her husband started working second shift. Exciting developments for both of them professionally, but rough because they are pretty recently married and now they rarely see each other. It turns into something similar to a long-distance relationship, where you only see each other on the weekends. And as many of us know, when you have so little time together it puts a heck of a lot of pressure on the time you do have to spend with each other.
I wonder how friends with new babies manage to maintain their jobs, their relationship, and make sure the baby gets fed, when, for example, they have to get a sitter to cover the undetermined amount of time between when mommy leaves for work and daddy gets home. When do they see each other?
And how did my parents, when I was three, four, five, six years old, take care of two to four children while my dad was in school and my mom worked second shift catering at Holiday Inn (which did not fulfill her), manage to feed themselves and their children, and still have time to even speak to each other, much less maintain an actual relationship and stay married for twenty-some years? I'm floored.
Because here I am, with no children, working 35 hours a week, falling out of touch with my boyfriend who I see every day, when he has an unusual work schedule for a finite (if undetermined) amount of time. We snap at each other. We talk past each other. We keep missing each other's meaning. Our communication -- the very foundation of our relationship -- is just generally suffering. I don't know how people do it when they have to go out of their way to see each other at all, when they have dependents, and when they are operating under these conditions for an indefinite amount of time.
When it comes down to it, J. and I are fine. Just today he had a couple of hours off from work, so when I got out we sat down for a pretty leisurely dinner at Hockessin's favorite little Mexican place, and got to actually look each other in the eye and talk about the things we haven't talked about.
So what I'm saying is, it's hard. It takes a daunting amount of energy and intention and commitment to even approach the topic of reconnecting, working out how to line everything back up, or find a new order that will work under different circumstances without burning everyone out. And every couple or family or friend group has their own version of this story: And Then Life Got In The Way.
Actually, I would bet that every couple, family, and friend group has a whole series of these stories. I'm sure I'll be writing and rewriting mine until the end of time.
* * * * * * *
Like second set of baby steps on Facebook at www.facebook.com/theBabyStepsSaga! New posts show up there first, plus other articles about post-grad life, plus teasers and other important information. Thanks for reading! Tune in on Sunday night for this week's All Good Things list, and next Wednesday for more reflections on being a "new adult."
Date night is experiencing some turbulence lately. Not so much internally, and if it was I guess you wouldn't expect me to share it on the blog anyway, but thanks to factors outside of our control, J. and I are having to reevaluate.The coffeeshop of lore, Bishop's, where we met, has been uprooted and is now a one-man baked goods supplier run out of a home kitchen. For awhile J. thought he was going to be without a job, but then the people who are taking over the space said they wanted to keep him on as part of the startup team for the new place. Which to me sounds like a great opportunity, but also comes with a heavy load in terms of time, energy, and expertise.
In my entrepreneurship classes in college, we always talked about what huge investment is involved in starting a new business. It's more than a full-time job, and obviously tends to require a lot of financial capital, and you also have to be extremely well-prepared with a business plan, some projection of how things are going to pan out (hopefully supported by at least a little market research), a certain degree of knowledge of the industry and good business practice in general.
But you don't really get it until you or your significant other is working 13- to 16-hour days, and when he's not actually at work he's tired and stressed out and distracted. You don't really get how much of a sacrifice it can be to follow your dreams (if opening a business is a dream for you, as it has been for me since I was 13 or 14) until you start to feel the repercussions on other areas of your life, outside of work.
And here's what really gets to me, as I'm recognizing this latest embodiment of the ripple effect.
I have a friend who recently got a 9-to-5 job just as her husband started working second shift. Exciting developments for both of them professionally, but rough because they are pretty recently married and now they rarely see each other. It turns into something similar to a long-distance relationship, where you only see each other on the weekends. And as many of us know, when you have so little time together it puts a heck of a lot of pressure on the time you do have to spend with each other.
I wonder how friends with new babies manage to maintain their jobs, their relationship, and make sure the baby gets fed, when, for example, they have to get a sitter to cover the undetermined amount of time between when mommy leaves for work and daddy gets home. When do they see each other?
And how did my parents, when I was three, four, five, six years old, take care of two to four children while my dad was in school and my mom worked second shift catering at Holiday Inn (which did not fulfill her), manage to feed themselves and their children, and still have time to even speak to each other, much less maintain an actual relationship and stay married for twenty-some years? I'm floored.
Because here I am, with no children, working 35 hours a week, falling out of touch with my boyfriend who I see every day, when he has an unusual work schedule for a finite (if undetermined) amount of time. We snap at each other. We talk past each other. We keep missing each other's meaning. Our communication -- the very foundation of our relationship -- is just generally suffering. I don't know how people do it when they have to go out of their way to see each other at all, when they have dependents, and when they are operating under these conditions for an indefinite amount of time.
When it comes down to it, J. and I are fine. Just today he had a couple of hours off from work, so when I got out we sat down for a pretty leisurely dinner at Hockessin's favorite little Mexican place, and got to actually look each other in the eye and talk about the things we haven't talked about.
So what I'm saying is, it's hard. It takes a daunting amount of energy and intention and commitment to even approach the topic of reconnecting, working out how to line everything back up, or find a new order that will work under different circumstances without burning everyone out. And every couple or family or friend group has their own version of this story: And Then Life Got In The Way.
Actually, I would bet that every couple, family, and friend group has a whole series of these stories. I'm sure I'll be writing and rewriting mine until the end of time.
* * * * * * *
Like second set of baby steps on Facebook at www.facebook.com/theBabyStepsSaga! New posts show up there first, plus other articles about post-grad life, plus teasers and other important information. Thanks for reading! Tune in on Sunday night for this week's All Good Things list, and next Wednesday for more reflections on being a "new adult."
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