Leaving the house with Hugga by myself is daunting. I never feel more alone in this city than when I’m out of the house. After a long day of work (at home), I’m clamoring to get us out and about, but when we finally get to our destination (which, for the past couple of weeks, has been either Target or a frozen yogurt place), I’m anxious to make it through the trip and get home as quickly as possible.
This anxiety is totally familiar to me. This is the third time I’ve moved to California, and despite moving here completely voluntarily, now that I’m actually here I worry that I may never really feel at home again.
So I just need to give myself time, right? But I think I’ve already tried that.
This is what I’m trying to tell you about adulthood. That good ideas sometimes feel like shitty ones when you’re finally following them through.
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I had a conference call that lasted six hours today. Lately my work days have been filled with this type of nonsense — forever long conference calls, stress around the clock, and most things about my job (at least on the old product) literally making no sense to me. It’s an hourly struggle to keep Hugga entertained (and quiet) during these meetings. Between my mom and mother-in-law visiting and Huz’s work schedule, we’ve been able to just chance it for the past month, but it’s clear that working from home isn’t going to get easier and this arrangement isn’t going to work for much longer.
Preschool is the natural next step in Hugga’s life, and this would be the case whether I worked or not. I’m just not doing her any favors by keeping her at home with me and letting her run the show all day. We’re shopping early education centers in the immediate area and it’s terrifying. Aside from having to check the facility’s cleanliness and make sure the teachers are a good match for my kid, the next questions are “Can we actually afford your tuition?” and “How long is your waiting list?”
I’ve done all types of variations on hours to see whether or not we could get by with sending her to preschool part time — even considering dropping my work schedule to part time or quitting my job altogether (a heavenly, if not impossible idea) — but the point is preschool, even part-time, still costs a lot of money.
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Over the holiday weekend one of Huz’s best friends from CT (who now lives in San Diego) came up for a visit. He asked me about grad school, emphasized how much he respected me for everything I’m trying to pull together, and then asked me, “So what’s the bigger plan for you?”
The best I could articulate was that I just didn’t want to feel trapped in the hamster wheel anymore. I didn’t sink half my savings into this move and bust my ass to get into an MFA program just for more of that.
But I’m nervous about the implications of this. I’ve long said that I accept I may never be able to shake a day job, but what am I really saying? That I’m actually willing to continue this exhausting schedule of working and parenting and writing and then stressing out about work for the rest of the foreseeable future? That I can’t have the career I really want? That I hope to eventually get used to being treated like a fifth grader in a foreign country? Or am I really saying I want to give myself a shot at living out my passion?
The beauty of being in LA is the overwhelming and urgent sense of possibility here. Nobody identifies themselves by what they really do. Waiters call themselves actors. There are people here who make a decent allowance doing shit you didn’t even realize anyone could capitalize on. There are mysterious and intriguing storefronts all over this city rented out to organizations that don’t actually sell any goods.
Being here, I feel more pressure, welcome pressure, to find another way. We moved here to create a new script for our family. It won’t come easily and it won’t come overnight, and it’ll probably feel shitty at times, but we’ll get there.
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