Maintaining selt-esteem while pretending your career is on track

Posted by Offer Tsuriel on November 8, 2009

All right, let’s say you’ve established your home office. You’ve decorated it. You’ve got phone calls coming in and work going out. You’ve learned the Joy of Sweatpants. Now let’s talk about self-image.
Most working people have simple job descriptions. Presented with a blank for “employer,” they write a name and address and go away satisfied that they’ve done their duty.
For folks who work at home, it’s not so straightforward. When it comes time to fill out a form, the blank spaces become paralyzing philosophical queries into what we do and where we’re going with our lives. I’ve often fallen into such black holes of self-analysis. Within minutes, I’m ready to return to a regular job, any job, rather than ponder how I surrendered my manly provider role and became a househusband. I sit at my desk, repeating a mantra until the bleak depression passes. The mantra goes like this: “Would you like fries with that?”

 

Sometimes, even the mantra is not enough. When it gets really bad, I go to my closet and stare at the dusty neckties hanging there, leftovers from the days when I worked in a newsroom. That’s usually enough to snap me out of it, to remind me of why I chose to stay home and eke out a living rather than enjoy the comforts of a regular salary and benefits package. But it’s an uneasy peace. All it takes to send me into a mental sputter is to have someone ask, “And what do you do for a living?”
The latest fit of navel-gazing was sparked by an alumni questionnaire from my alma mater, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The journalism department regularly asks alumni to update their personal data so it can send out newsletters that show us how our old classmates have become more successful than us. I suspect the school also uses the database to hit us up for money, which is laughable, considering that most alumni are journalists or worse, people so poor that their idea of a charitable donation requires asking a bum for a receipt.
The questionnaire has ominous blanks for the following: Business address and phone number, Current position, City where you work, Employer, City where employer is located (if different). It also has spaces that say, “Check below if applicable: New employer. Promotion with same employer.”
All fine and dandy if the alumnus has a regular job. But the categories don’t measure the accomplishments of those of us who work at home. No questions about “Loads of laundry done per week” or “Number of months without a trip to the emergency room.”
Sure, I have a job, of sorts. Under Current Position, I can write author and newspaper columnist. That sounds pretty good, though they’ll catch onto me once I list the same address and phone number for Home and Business. And what do I list under Employer? Myself? The honest answer probably would be my two sons. They boss me around more than anyone else.
When I get into these self-absorbed funks, my career as a writer starts to look like a financial sinkhole and I can’t even consider it a real job. Instead, I consult my Inner Woman and focus on the rewards of the man-hours I put into the household reasonably well-adjusted children, a happy wife, a sometimes clean house, a business wardrobe built around sandals and flannel shirts.
If I want to be truthful on the questionnaire, I should answer househusband under Current Position. I can imagine myoId classmates snorting at that. But you can bet your ass the school wouldn’t ask me for money anymore.
Househusband, however, just doesn’t sound glamorous or interesting or fulfilling. It doesn’t reflect how hard Iwork or how well my job status fits with my wife’s career and our domestic demands. It doesn’t say: here’s a guy who’s striving, one who’s making a splash. Here’s a guy whose wife is proud of him, even though he is officially unemployed.
So I came up with a different job title. It may leave my classmates scratching their heads, but it’ll make me feel better when I receive the newsletter in the mail. Current position?