If you’re following this blog, you might have noticed a lot if posts about my weight loss surgery and the subsequent weight loss. So you’re reading this and looking at the title of the post and thinking… That’s a big change.
You’d be right, too, but that’s not the event which promoted this post.
You see, for the last 17 years, I have been, for various reasons, a stay-at-home mom. With my DH being in the Navy and subject to being deployed a LOT, it made more sense to be home with My Girl and Little Dude. To be able to care for them and be available for things like doctor’s visits, school functions, etc. Any job which kept me long hours or weekends would mean sending them to day care, which was often too costly to be worth it.
Since his retirement from the Navy, DH has had a pretty good job as mechanic with an excavation company. However, he was recently laid off and even more recently, the lay off was made permanent.
So… I went out and started applying for jobs. And got my resume brushed off and polished up.
I didn’t actually expect to get hired right away or at all, because of the extreme gap of 16 years from my last real job until now.
But I was called in for an interview with a local bank, for a part time teller position, and got a second interview… and got a call in for a job.
For last week, I’ve been having orientation and systems training. Tomorrow, I have my first day of live training.
I’m nervous. And excited.
It’s a huge change from staying home, helping Mom around the house, gardening (spring and summer) and raising my chickens.
And then there’s this…
If you know me, you know that the last thing I want to do is spend a half hour putting on makeup and doing my hair. It’s a foreign concept.
If you can’t tell … That look in my eye is hesitance and “can I really pull this off?”
I’m just not a make up person by nature.
See what I mean?
And yet, here I getting dressed up in clothes I wouldn’t normally wear and putting on makeup.
And heading into a strange new world where I have a job and my husband doesn’t.
2018 is starting off with a lot of surprises, for sure.
You look adorable! Did you get a haircut as well – or is it just that time has passed between the photos?
I like both photos for different reasons. Bottom pic: scholar or politician. Top pic: sex bomb or of course bank employee.
Skillful makeup job. (Ex NYC fashion industry speaking here). I am guessing you used a tiny bit of brown shadow & mascara & a tiny bit of blush & lip gloss. (Do I win something for guessing right?). Perfect.
Don’t be frightened of the time lapse from working with/for others. Remember that a lot of people at the top of their game still say they feel like impostors. (My friend owns a small record co & told me he still feels that). And raising children whilst running a household is a difficult job – that frankly a *lot* of people can’t do really well.
My husband was an officer in the Italian Navy. On an aircraft carrier. He had a *massive* panic attack when he had to go back on ship after a brief idyllic shore leave. Due to the tiny closed spaces below deck (sleeping quarters etc.). He had to be medicated by the ship doctor. Briefly – as it was at the end of his duty. Peacetime duty. Two years mandatory conscription service. Which he called not the *real* Italian Navy… lol…
Happy New Year xx
Never, never underestimate the importance of your once was the real job of being there for your children. Those years cannot be reinvented unlike your stunning makeover. I too remember being excited and nervous when I retrained and then re-entered paid employment in the 1970s – a time of social change. It was a struggle for women in many ways, as I found out then, to reinvent themselves, to make big changes. But life moves on. Enjoy the new you.
Thank you for the kind and encouraging words!
My whole family has been sent into upheaval over this. I’m usually there in The mornings to pack lunches and make breakfast. Now I pack lunches at night before bed and have to start getting ready for work as soon as breakfast is over. I used to feed and care for the chickens after the left for school and now am doing that at 5:30, which right now means it’s still dark when I go to feed them and cannot enjoy them at all.
But right now, I’m full time hours for the first month, until my training period is over. Then I will be part time and things will start evening out.
PS: Is that a mousse foundation in the photo of your makeup & tools? I read that it is lighter than tube or bottle formulations.
Your skin looks really *glowy* in the top pic (& spellcheck is telling me that’s not a word). I never use foundation anymore because it settles in tiny lines (between my eyes); but that is clearly not happening in your photo. So perhaps the mousse bases are really lighter.
To be perfectly honest, I know nothing about makeup. My daughter went with me and picked out everything you see there except the Chapstick and then showed me how to apply it without looking like a total fool.