Skynet has no emotions

A long, long time ago in an apartment far away, I played a Star Wars text based RPG in Yahoo Groups.  Yahoo Messenger was new and I recall doing a bit of beta testing on it and it was quite exciting that there was something other than AOL to text chat with people.  I connected with people all over the world playing this game.

Due to a growing friendship with a few guys in the UK who had become fairly consistent players, I got chosen to help regulate some of the game play in the groups.  I was a little disappointed as I found out the guy had pretty much stolen rules word for word from the old Star Wars RPG, especially when it meant that it didn't really translate to an online RPG system where there was no dice to roll.

But the worst thing I had to deal with was attitudes of the players.  I had a rule: if someone's post completely pissed me off, I waited until I replied.  I found that the sooner I posted a reply to someone, the more emotional the reply and the less it made sense.  I had become caught up in the emotion and the insanity of what someone else was trying to do to me.  My thoughts were disorganized because I was trying to get how angry I was out too fast.  I also found that my posting in the heat of my own emotion only inflamed things more and eventually made the situation worse.

So I began waiting.

I left their nasty words, their anger, and their attacks there online for everyone to see for anywhere from a few hours, to an entire day.  And I thought.

I distilled the post down to what I needed to address.  The act of waiting allowed me the time to organize my thoughts, work on my arguments, and find the documentation I needed to back up why I would need to make a ruling one way or another, where they might have gone wrong, or where someone else began a snowball effect leading to the problem.  It also gave time for the other person to calm down too.

For those few hours I looked like an idiot that couldn't stand up for myself.  But since I had taken the time to reply, and perhaps even reword some things to make sure they were neutral and definitive, I took a situation from an all out flame war into a well thought out and definitive reply.  My rulings were rarely questioned, overruled, or taken lightly.

The social media of today doesn't give us that time unless we take it.  I've had years of practice carefully wording what I type.  I am painfully aware how emotionless and inflectionless email and the written word can be unless we imbue it.  So I try to be careful to put a positive spin on almost everything I write online. 

And yes, perhaps even abuse a few emoticons along the way.

But I have a job!

When I was a new mom, I joined that elite list of women who were the Working Moms.  Wake up at all hours of the night, go to work hoping that the formula stain won't show on your blouse, do the daycare run-around, and fall into bed with the knowledge that you and your husband were providing the best education possible for your kids.  Plus the money was so nice we barely paid attention and bought whatever we wanted as long as the bank account was in the positive (usually).

When my child number two was born, I found myself in the enviable position of being a Stay-at-Home Mom.  On my meager teacher's salary, we couldn't afford to pay for my gas and clothes plus daycare for two kids.  My husband began his own business and lost his benefits, so I went on public assistance for a short time to help out because we still couldn't afford daycare on what I'd be able to make.  With my husband working every single waking hour to bring his business to be able to pay bills, he was unavailable to watch an infant and toddler.  That job was now mine exclusively.

For eight long years I stayed home.  It wasn't peaches and cream.  There were weeks and months of Ramen Noodles, shopping at the dollar store, clipping coupons, and making a $4 chicken stretch to feed us for days at a time.  But the mortgage got paid with negotiation, most of the bills got paid or were postponed, and our credit scores only took a small hit.  My husband's company began to do reasonably well and our debt from his consulting days began to head in the right direction again.

When I began the Stay-at-Home Mom journey, I was a lazy lump.  (Who am I kidding?  I still am!)  Martha Stewart, I'm not.  I never was.  But the depression after having a baby and quitting a job hit me more emotionally than I expected.  I fully understood the lack of purpose someone going into retirement felt.  Granted, I had my kids and the day-to-day busy-ness of books, playing, diapers, and cooking three meals a day filling my time.  It took a year before I came to terms with my position.  I had become that check box on the form where it says Homemaker, Unemployed, Housewife.  A college educated woman who had been told all her life not to rely on a man to pay the bills had become the Stay-at-Home Mom.

As the kids grew and went off to school, I filled my days with food shopping.  I carted my grandparents around in my mid-bulk transport and became their taxi as well.  I volunteered at the kids' school, but somehow avoided becoming a fully-fledged PTO person.  And best of all, I volunteered in Scouting.

My kids define who I've become.  I'm their Mom when I walk into their classrooms and their Scout Leader.  My interests are their interests and my day is their day.

Now, they're off to school and I'm looking to join the Working Mother group again.  My house is no cleaner, but it may as well be just as messy while I'm working.

How do you add onto a resume' that is blank for years of all that work I did?  At first I had no idea how to fill in those gaps.  You can't quantify a salary in diapers, cookies and milk, and trips to the park.  There is no doubt in my mind those years were worth it to me, but now I'm left in the limbo of being barely more experienced at a job than a new college graduate.  I also made poor decisions before graduating from college in addition to that gaping hole in my resume' and am now paying the price for only being qualified for lower paying jobs, a slim fraction of my husband's earning potential.  Yet I am able to fill those empty blocks with the little jobs I did while volunteering: event planner, volunteer recruitment, record keeping, correspondence, customer service, program coordinator, education implementation...

All those years, doing the jobs that everyone else got paid for.  Because hell yes, I worked.  I was just never gainfully employed.