Krafty Kitten

A year ago, I was a regular office worker.  I got up early, dropped my son off at day care, worked 8-9 hours, and then packed up, picked up my son, and went home.  And I hated it.

As a little girl, I lived out in the country.  I could identify edible plants, grew herbs and flowers, rode the neighbor’s horse and chased cows.  I’ve even had to chase the neighbor’s pigs out of our garden and down the street.  I learned to hunt for Indian Beads and fish.  But growing into a teen and heading off to college, I looked forward to an urban life.  Something with TV reception and air conditioning.

Back when I first met my husband and we started dating, I told him exactly what I was looking for in a relationship and exactly where I wanted to end up. He had been married and divorced and already had four kids.  So, it was important to me that he understood what I wanted in case it didn’t mesh with his future desires.  I wanted to get married, I wanted kids, and I wanted to stay home with the kids.  If we were going to date at all seriously, he had to understand these things from the get-go and be open to them.

He had to think about it, but he decided these were acceptable goals.

The next three years were filled with all sorts of excitement.  We got married, changed jobs, had a baby, changed homes, and dealt with the craziness of his ex-wife and our blended family.  By 2008, I had been in my position as a secretary for 4 years and wasn’t really feeling the love.

I enjoyed talking about things with my faculty, but the job itself was full of repetition and, to be honest, I felt like my IQ started dropping on a daily basis. I had gone to college and been an English major, which meant I could do pretty much anything but was qualified for nothing.  I was stuck and, even worse, it wasn’t helping our living situation.  Between gas costs and child care we were barely making it.  That spring, we had to move again, even further from my job which meant increased gas costs, and child care for my son and my step-children during the summer looked to top $300 a week.

I took a second job in March, teaching English at the community college.  And I loved it.  However, this put my job situation at about 70 hours a week, including travel time.  By April, I was feeling the pressure and it wasn’t going to help our summer situation.  So, after discussing it and working the numbers with Big Guy, we decided it had become more financially suitable for me to stop working as a secretary and stay home, working part time as a teacher and as a freelance writer.

My mom, who had really influenced my gardening desires and my knowledge of flora and fauna, had already been working on her “doomstead”.  She had been raising chickens, growing her sustainable garden, and been working on going “off grid” in terms of energy.  She still lived in the house I had grown up in, and as I watched my kids grow up, I desperately wanted to get them out of the destructive urban setting and teach them some basic skills that could come in handy in an uncertain future.

As it is, we still live in a semi-urban setting, renting a trailer in Indiana.  But we have enough of a yard to grow a rather large garden.  I do my best to relieve some of the financial stress from my not working by making and selling things and doing whatever writing jobs come my way.

It may not be the most lucrative or comfortable of lifestyles, but I would rather this than the office politics ever again.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS