Working 9 to 5, What a Way to Make a Living

[Disclaimer: This post is not a complaint. It's not meant to inspire pity, or to imply that I have it any worse than anyone else. In fact, I have it quite good: I have a great job, a fine salary, and health insurance; my husband has a great job, an adequate salary, and my health insurance: we have lots of childcare options. This is just me musing on what it's like.]

1989 was the last time I worked 9-5. Since then I've worked anywhere from not at all (when I traveled for five months; after each of my children was born; this summer) to 16 hours a day, six days a week (when I directed a summer camp). Most recently I've been working quite a lot of hours but with quite a lot of flexibility.

Not any more. As of last Monday, I have to be at work at 9(ish, but not very ish), and I leave at 5. And this 9-5 is not your read-blogs-for-an-hour, go-to-lunch-and-do-all-your-errands kind of 9-5; it's more the barely-time-to-check-your-email kind of 9-5. And everyone else stays long past 5 (when I was offered the job, I said I would only take it if I could leave at 5, and they said ok). So that means I am doing in 9-5 what everyone else is doing in 9-long past 5.

But let's go back to 1989. In 1989 I had no children, no house, no significant projects outside of work. I liked to go running. I liked to read books. I liked to go to the movies. I liked to hang out with my friends and on weekends go to parties. I remember no problems accomplishing any of those things. I would work my 9-5 or 9:30-6, and then I would go running, read books, hang out with my friends, go to movies. I don't remember being tired. I don't remember feeling like I didn't even have a chance to read the mail. I don't think I got very much mail.

Now it's 2005. I have two children, a house, some projects that must get done in the near future, a blog. I have a big heap of mail and bills that I haven't looked at. I need a haircut. We need a lamp for the living room, so that when we do get a chance to read a book, we aren't reading in the shadows. We need to find a contractor. I wrote a letter on Sunday and I still haven't gotten a stamp for it.

I get home from work, I mother, I collapse. The rest of it? It's got to happen sometime, but I can't imagine when.