Today, Friday September 18th, marks one month of my first post grad, real world, big girl job and I can barely believe how fast time flies.
Before anyone who knows me well freaks out about the title of this post, let me explain: I’m a nanny and the kids that are mentioned in the title are the ones I claim for 8 hours a day, 4 days a week. Being in charge of kids for that amount of time is seriously more tiring than any good parents ever let on, or at least, I had no idea. The kids I nanny for are two and four years old and no one tells you how much energy it takes to entertain and care for kids that age. I am constantly grabbing food, changing the channel, breaking up a squabble, cleaning up LEGOs, and doing dishes. I never knew that two small children could produce that many dishes—I swear they must both be going through growth spurts!
When I get home after a day of nannying, I’m desperate for a shower and nap, and by the time I’m awake again, it’s quick dinner, FaceTime my boyfriend, and then off to bed by 10:00 so I can get up at 6:30 and do it all again! That being said, I have not had nearly enough energy to bring myself to do any kind of writing. As a result, this blog had been sorely missing out on posts from me that aren’t bullet journal related. So what made me write today? After all its 5pm on a Friday night so I should be exhausted from my day of childcare, probably engaging in a post-shower nap. My dad mentioned something to me today on our drive over to work this morning, (and yes, he drives me, I’m still working on the whole get-your-own-car thing). He asked, “Not to put pressure on you or anything, I’m just curious, but are you interested in a writing job like Nick is applying for? Are you looking at writing jobs or only the theatre ones?”
The question confused me. Why would I need to be actively looking for a job when I already have a full time job as a nanny and a part-time position at an antique and vintage barn sale? I mean, sure I browse the Playbill email I get every Friday for theatre positions that I know I can’t apply for because they’re too far, or require more time than I currently have. He continued, “I only ask because I know that theatre is not happening like you’d hoped right now.” Huh. He had a point. I really wasn’t looking, like, at all. It had been my dream, heading into college, to write fun articles for a magazine like Cosmopolitan, but my dream changed when I rediscovered my love for theatre. Sure, I also majored in Creative Writing, I still loved to write, but my dream became to someday start my own theatre company, writing would always be important, but to serve my desire for theatre. I sort of shrugged his question off, “Uh, not really because I have the nannying job, so I wasn’t actively looking for something else.”
But his comment stuck with me all day. He’s right. I won’t be a nanny forever. Kids grow up, they start school and in a few years the family won’t need me to watch their kids full time and I’ll be out of a job. At what point would I have realized this and started my search? After I already was unemployed? With a month left? Either way, I needed to start thinking long term. I mean, that’s the whole reason I started this blog in the first place, right? I wanted to have something to point to, a portfolio of my creative works, neatly collected for when the world opened up and theaters started looking for people to fill them again. This blog was going to be my, “Hey look, I was still productive even though the world was shut down and I wasn’t working in my field.” I had completely lost sight of the bigger picture because I was so stuck on the everyday of my nannying job.
This past month, I haven’t been totally dry in terms of writing content, but those pieces never went anywhere. I started one about my parent’s house flooding, but the plug was pulled on that story when I realized that the house would probably never sell if the explicit details of the damage were just laying out on the internet. The other piece I was working on was about my history with theatre, a complicated story which thankfully has a happy ending, but I fell out of love with it and had to put it on the shelf for a bit. Between those two setbacks, and the lack energy I have been feeling this month, my game has just simply been off. At one point during quarantine, I was writing every day for a month and a half which felt so good, and I really need to get back to that point. So this post is to be the fire lit under by butt, and a promise to you, that I’ll be writing more. That being said, I look forward to writing to you all more often.
Till then…Xo,
Madison