To work or not to work? A mom's throbbing ordeal

Moms usually get the beating when bombarded by the passion to embrace both career and family obligations. Especially when financial constraints set in.

What to do when you need to earn a living yet you can't juggle work and home responsibilities at the same time?

It happened to me and I had no other option but to make a tough decision. I had to decide what to prioritize.

I've been working for the longest time since college and it wasn't easy dumping that over homemaking. At first, I thought it would be a total nightmare spending the whole day keeping house, doing the laundry, preparing food and running errands. That's a total diversion from the more cerebral tasks I was used to doing at work.

I had to weigh my options well and my decision turned out to be the best and boldest I ever made in my whole life.

In case you're facing the same ordeal, maybe the following could help you get to a smart move too.

1. Determine and rank your priorities. Which comes first - career, family or anything else?
2. List down the pros and cons in pursuing those priorities.
3. Talk to your partner about it. Maybe he has some solutions to some of the backlash you listed.
4. Sleep on it several times until you're sure you know what you're getting into. No need to be drastic unless you're awfully pressed by time. Even so, make it the smartest drastic decision you'll ever make.
5. Decide and make your decision work. Deciding and regretting about it even before you even made an effort to make it work is just so lame and pathetic.

It would be a great advantage if your decision matches with that of your partner because there'll be the both of you to pull things through. Remember, marriage is a partnership.

And hey, don't forget to pray and ask for Divine Intervention. That should seal it.

Hard times in 2009: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars

KUNG HEI FAT CHOI!

The year of the earth ox ushers in. Feng Shui experts are predicting on TV that it'll be a tough year ahead. Save for the lucky people under Dragon and Snake signs.

Even though I don't have any drop of Chinese blood circulating in my veins, I eagerly watched GMA 7's popular TV show Mel & Joey as they invited two Feng Shui experts on the set to talk about what's in store for all animal signs.

I'm a Rabbit and according to the experts, I should be wary of opportunists and that I should watch both my wealth and health (err... wealth? where is it?). They said Rabbits won't be as lucky this year but anything can be overcome with fervent prayer. Cheers to that!

Also, what I noticed was that the experts kept on emphasizing that apart from prayers, doing charity works would tremendously turn around your supposed bad luck. Good karma, I would call it.

They also advised using good luck charms like crystals and precious stones to repel illnesses, bad energy and the likes.

I felt uncomfortable whenever they uttered stuff like "This is not your lucky year," or "Beware of this and that."

True, we could all use a little warning.

But whatever the stars tell us, I still prefer to believe the famous line from a Shakespeare masterpiece when Julius Ceasar said, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings."

Great jobs with demanding schedules

Ironic as it is, some great jobs are awful in terms of schedules. And I've always landed on one.
During my stint as a marketing supervisor in a big retail company, I spent more than nine hours in the office especially prior to and during marketing events. I had to report even on holidays and some weekends. It consumed me to that point that I'd thought of advertising schemes until I retired to bed at night. I utilized every waking hour thinking about perks when I was stuck in traffic, taking my lunch and coffee breaks or even in the shower. My mind was so preoccupied, I couldn't think about my own private life.
Just when I thought that accepting an offer to manage a branch of another retail company would give me a little bit of time for myself (I presumed that operations management was less demanding than marketing), I had a double whammy because I was given the responsibility to handle both store operations and marketing. Oh I welcomed the tasks, I even loved them. But the schedule was so demanding, I was required to render 11 hours per day, with only one day off.
What a way to go. My job consumed me hook, line and sinker.
But if this were a hall of fame for jobs with excruciating schedules, my first job refuses to lag behind. As a DJ back in college, I was doing the midnight shift from 10 pm-2 am. Sometimes 2 am-6 am. I had to sleep inside the booth, take a bath somewhere in the morning and rush to school before 8 am.
I spent five Christmases and New Year's eves in the radio station as far as I can remember. One time, Christmas caught me on the street while I was trying to find my way home but no cabs nor jeepneys to hail.
The schedules were killing me but I stayed on for almost seven years in broadcasting. And went on to join the retail industry and corporate world for another seven years.
Told you, those jobs were great as to their job descriptions. But the schedules were a little pain in the neck, especially for a working mom.
But there's no perfect job anyway, is there? Besides, without challenges, any job gets boring.
Unless your job is sucking the life out of you, just do what you love to do.

0 user comments / leave

Blogging and loving it!

I have always wanted to have an avenue to speak my mind and publicize it for the world to see. Now I'm finally living my dream! Thanks to the magic of technology.

The internet was yet a baby when I was taking up Mass Communication in college several years back. I didn't have an inkling that it's going to be a huge part of me as it is now. Blogging has definitely reshaped the lines of communications across the globe. Everyone in the world is now a few clicks away.

With almost everything possible using the net, the world is getting smaller.

So I'm taking the chance to explore this wonder. I'm blogging and definitely loving it!