Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end

Meandering work in progress -- ideas jotted April 2010

I have always had a job. When there wasn't full-time work, there were freelance gigs and contracts. I took my first union job when I was 14. Before that, there was babysitting.

And yet, I am not a person who has enjoyed her work. Much of the time, it felt onerous, crushing, a daily proving ground. I have never learned the art of leaving work at work -- it came home with me, living rent-free in my brain, making me afraid to answer the phone at 11 p.m., knowing Someone Wanted Something. It's the reason I have never had a personal cellphone. I am like Pavlov's dog; the ringing makes me anxious.

During all those working years, I worked hard. I took it seriously. Too seriously, perhaps. I fantasized about not having to go to work, of not having to perform, of not having to juggle assignments. I imagined what it would be like to attend a concert and not have to dash off 14 inches of pithy prose before the encore. To read a book and not have to review it or interview the author.

I envied my friend, who left her banking job to stay at home with her children. The children kept her busy, I knew, but to be free of the phone calls, the meetings, the demands of others, especially the idiotic others... bliss. Sure, she faced the demands of young children, but she was meeting the needs of people who loved her, at least. These were pleasant, easy children and she enjoyed being with them. I enjoyed being with them. I thought I, too, might enjoy this lifestyle. I was frazzled and burned out. I couldn't wait for the chance to resign, to retire.

I left work in late 2007 and I haven't been the same since. I assumed that once I unwound a bit, I'd hit my stride. I haven't. I cannot shake this feeling that  I just need to put my feet down.

"Work had become the scaffolding of my life," the former magazine editor Dominique Browning writes about the demise of her job. "It was what I counted on. It held up the floor of my moods, kept the facade intact."

Although I voluntarily quit my job -- Browning was laid off -- the end result was the same: "Without work, who was I? I do not mean that my title defined me. What did define me was the simple act of working. The loss of my job triggered a cascade of self-doubt and depression."

I miss the busyness, the whirl of the day, having to constantly rise to the occasion. I don't travel anymore, or stay in luxe hotels in New York City or Los Angeles. I don't wear nice clothes, or shop for boots so expensive they'd make my mother's eyes water. Now, I cut my own hair. Nothing says "I've given up!" like cutting your own hair.

I used to fantasize about having all that unstructured time. I've never been a tidy person, a domestic person, but I became fascinated with those who have made an art of it. I devoured the writing of Jane Brocket, who shucked corporate life to rhapsodize about The Gentle Art of Domesticity. Oh, I thought, I will so love keeping a home! I will finally have the time to do it right, to be organized, to be careful and thorough and mindful. It'll be so restful. I'll be busy, yes, but it will be a rewarding, comfortable sort of busy. There'll be no weeds in the garden, no languishing pile of clothes to be dry-cleaned. Besides, I'll have time to work on my photography, read for pleasure and catch up on correspondence. I'll enjoy cooking once again. I'll knit socks and sweaters. I will be on top of things. I will be... serene.

As C would say: Oh, it is to laugh.

In my new role as care-taker -- of a school-age child and a chronically ill parent -- I am still busy. But I am often left with a lot of unstructured time and that is the death knell for a procrastinator, for a person who needs structure and task to focus. Now, I am aimless. Without momentum, I drift, not knowing where to start, what to do, or the desire to do any of it. And -- I suspect this is depression -- I have no energy. The weekdays mostly blend and blur together and I find myself envying C, who runs to join the school line with such purpose.

I am a terrible housekeeper. The house is messier and we are more disorganised than ever before. I am having to face up to myself: if I didn't really enjoy work, but am an incompetent homemaker, then what am I? I can't really go back to work. For one thing, I need flexibility, given the unpredictable state of my mother's health, her home's distance from my home and the role I have assumed in managing her care. Further, we have moved to a city about one-tenth of the size of where we once lived, where similar opportunities just don't exist. True, Toronto is just about an hour away, but again, I cannot give the time or the energy to a big-city job that requires hours of commuting. And given the psychic hole I have dug for myself, I am certain that any freelance work I might take on would just create a new layer of hand-wringing, something else to fret over, to squeeze in around all the undone housework.