We’ve been here on Oahu since December 10. That’s just over four months. In the grand scheme of life, that’s not very long at all. That’s less than half a school year; a season and a half as I might have reckoned it back as AD. I know I’ve brought up this point before, but I think I’ve figured out a rather significant piece of the puzzle as to why our time here seems to have moved in such a different manner than time back home. Coupled with that, was another interesting realization this week, but I am once again getting ahead of myself, gentle reader…
Of course things are paced a bit slower here. That’s generally a good thing I suppose, though I will admit frustration with some aspects of that truth. Services and businesses move far slower here, to the point of irritation at times. Mail can be either lightning fast, or ridiculously slow. But, so it goes I suppose.
This is the first time in my life, since perhaps the age of four or five that I’ve not had the bulk of my time structured around school. From Kindergarten, up until this past December, I have been engaged in some kind of school community. My life was built around the Monday-Friday, 7am-3pm, September through June, with holiday and summer breaks, American school-based structure. Any vacation I took or plans I made were built around school, whether it was as a student or later on as an educator. Heck, we got married in the summer, so we could go on our honeymoon while school was on break.
This is the longest stretch of my life without that structure, and now that I see that, I realize that there are other ways to look at the world. It’s been a little weird some Thursdays, where we generally go to the library for story time at 10am, and have that be the first time we leave the house. Back home, I’d have been at work for three hours already. That crosses my mind less than it did when we first got here though.
The other realization I’ve had is that my entire mindset as it relates to work has shifted dramatically. I would like to think I’m a hard worker, and feel that I had good parental modeling in that vein. I worked very hard in my career, and feel like I was doing good work at the last school when I resigned for us to come here.
That said, I worked that hard because I had to. I worked in education because, well, I guess you could say that I felt I had an aptitude for it, and it seemed natural. But countless are the times I recall having the discussion on the ever popular topic: what would you do if you didn’t have to work?
As a side note, if you’ve not seen the movie “Office Space” you really should. I feel it is an American Classic. Peter Gibbons, played by the erstwhile Ron Livingston, was a cinematic hero to me. Perhaps not at the same level as film heroes like William Wallace, Frodo Baggins, and The Scorpion King, but a hero to the American worker. Peter has a conversation with his neighbor, Lawrence, played by the always funny Diedrich Bader, where they discuss “what would you do if you had a million dollars?” Peter’s response? He says, “Nothing. I would relax. Sit on my ass all day.” Now, with three kids and me bucking for “father of the year,” that’s not really an option, but I think that the debate really boils down to the point of how does one define who they are and what they want.
I have begun to realize that many people become defined by their jobs, and I wonder if that is a good thing. Although, I still enjoy the reactions I get when I answer the time-tested “So, what do you do for a living?” Most women I meet seem to really appreciate that I’m working at home with the kids, and on the side at Chilli’s. (“Margarita Madness” remains in swing…Check your local store for details.) However, most men seem to take my answer as a cue to start talking about who they know and what jobs they can help me get. When I explain to them that this was a choice that we made as a family, that’s when my favorite part, the glazed “that does not compute” look creeps onto their faces.
The truth of the matter is, I don’t have to work right now. I don’t need to earn a huge salary and provide health coverage for my family. The wife’s position is enough for us to live on, and so, I suppose, I have myself been faced with the same inherent question that Peter and Lawrence debated in the film. (which also includes a great performance by Steven Root as “Milton,” and a very nice early performance by Jennifer Aniston) The wife and I have put ourselves and our family into a position where I don’t have to have a career right now. So my answer to that question was, and remains, I’ll raise my kids. The cash I bring home from Chilli’s goes to paying stuff here, so we can continue to kill off debts that we were building while I was making a pretty high salary, working a six days a week, oftentimes 12 hour a day, driving 80 miles a day and shot gunning 64 ounces of Wawa coffee a day so I didn’t fall asleep at the wheel, and never seeing my family. ( I do miss Wawa though) We’ve killed off 50% of our debts in the past three months here, by simplifying our lives and spending better.
There continue to be people in my life who can’t understand how I don’t want to go back to work full time in education. I’ve had more people approach me here with, “Hey, I know so-and-so, who you should call for a job.” I appreciate their efforts, but I just don’t want to go back anymore. At least not now. I don’t know that I really came to peace with that until I just wrote it. Don’t get me wrong, when we first got here, I missed it a lot. I still miss the kids, and many of the staff. I miss the school setting, at times, which as I said earlier, has been essentially my “normal” for the past 30 years. That’s a long time. Too long maybe. To say I have been disillusioned at times by working in education will surprise no one who knows me. I know I could never have kept up that wild pace at the last school. I’m not afraid of hard work. But the price was too high back home.
This is not to say that I don’t have stress being at home with the kids. In all honesty, between our regularly scheduled activities, teething, potty-training, getting a three-year old boy to wear his glasses, and trying to simply raise them right, I’m working pretty damned hard right now. There are days that going to work at Chilli’s is a relaxing break to my day. But I think one of my colleagues at the restaurant helped me piece some of this together during my shift today. We were talking, and she said, “Do you like working here?" and when I said, "Of course I do-what's not to love?" she replied, "Doesn't working here stress you out?” And I thought about it, and the answer was simply, “Not even a little.” I asked her to elaborate though. She mentioned difficult customers, and the occasional bad tip (which is becoming gratefully more rare). I told her what I used to do, and how on a daily basis I had to discipline kids, deal with angry parents, often the media, teachers, and virtually no job security. Add to that an irritating commute, and hours that kept me away from home way too much, and I said, “what’s the worst that can happen here? Outside accidental food poisoning, what’s the worst I can do-give someone Beef Quesadillas when they wanted Chicken?” (Which I did today, and the customer thanked me, saying it was great! We called it a Happy accident, and she left me a nice tip as well) to do my job well there, I need to be organized and, as "Office Space" might suggest, Full of "Flair," which apparently I don't have much of a problem with.
So, I smiled at her, and told her, “even when it’s crazy here, it’s a good crazy, and in terms of stress, with where I came from, this is nothing.”
And I think only now am I starting to see that. But then, it’s only been 4 months.
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