Life is too short to be unhappy or to compromise the relationship I have with my child.
To that end, I've made some changes in my life. I've chosen an option and am moving forward.
I quit my 9-5 job in favor of self-employment. Now many of you are thinking, "If you're making significant life changes, you may want to think about getting into rehab and stop smoking crack. You quit your job? You are most certainly deranged or addicted to some illegal substance."
6 months ago I would have most certainly agreed with you.
I've done a lot of soul searching and have come to the conclusion that self-employment will offer me the challenges, different personalities, opportunity to take my career in a new direction, advance and broaden my skills and most importantly, become a parent who's "present".
No matter how I make money to support my family and household the most important job I'll ever have is Mother. I can't and won't sacrifice my child for the sake of money. I can always make more money, I can't re-do Sebastian's childhood.
My goal is to be able to pick Sebastian up from school, go to soccer practice and games, volunteer at his school and just spend time with him. I firmly believe that if I establish a solid, quality relationship with him now that it's going to benefit him when he gets older and hopefully influences him enough that he won't get into too much trouble as a teenager and will become a productive, ethical adult with solid values and principles. Dropping him off at school at 7:30 and picking him up at 5:30 wasn't cutting the mustard for me. I felt that I was missing out on a lot of his life and that was causing me a lot of stress and grief.
It's going to be a significant financial hit for our house. That planned vacation is either going to get scaled down considerably or put on hold. Retirement? It's on hold for a little while. College fund? Due to unforeseen financial impacts over the last 2.5 years a college fund isn't even in place.
It's going to be a change in mentality for me. My self-motivation is going to need a shot of adrenaline as I'm the one generating the work and doing the work. There's no one else to fall back on. Health insurance? Jesus. I'm going to have to stay healthy because private health insurance is a HUGE hit to the pocketbook. Time to stock up on those vitamins.
Scary? Considering that I'm the sole support for the house, yeah. It's scary but the excitement and enhancing my relationship with Sebastian FAR outweighs the fear. Things have a way of falling into place and this path feels like the right one to take at this point in my life.