I’ve been holding out on you.
Obviously – I haven’t written in so long that friends are kindly asking if there’s something wrong with the RSS feed, but that’s not what I mean.
It’s this: The whole work thing (30 hours a week, which really cuts into my free time) is part of a major Meil Family Restructuring Plan.
In the 17 years Ari and I have been together, we have only both held full-time jobs for eleven months. There was school, of course, then graduate programs and children and entrepreneurship. We’ve always had health insurance, and thanks to the generosity of our parents and the good people at Citibank, we’ve always paid the bills.
But we haven’t always been balanced.
This latest experiment, Ari-the-provider and Kathleen-the-homemaker, has worked well enough. It’s brought us into our own, given us each confidence in roles we never expected to fill. But it’s also kept us from roles we love: Ari-the-writer, Kathleen-the-professional.
And so we’re embarking on a new adventure: Midcoast 2.0. Starting in November, Ari will work part-time for Maine Media Workshops. He’ll be home on Wednesdays, when the kids have early release, and we’ll all be done by 3. More time for writing, more time for family, fewer reasons for stress – and unbelievably, more money than we made last year.
It won’t be a panacea. The children will still bicker, the laundry will still pile up, there will still be more projects than we can pursue – but something about this feels right.
Here we go.
btw: photos are from the very beautiful wedding of our very wonderful friends, dena and brian.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
xoxoxo! Great pictures. Great new chapter. Good luck!
Sounds great! Best of luck with the new beginnings!
I am so eager to here more and so glad to learn about visionary role models trying to make it work for the whole and each part – and so feminist too! So, so, so wish I was closer and could learn more, bit by bit!