I have done a thing.

I quit my job.

It sure would fit the narrative of this blog nicely if, on the heels of the “Square Peg” posts, I was leaving my job to go on some great quest to find my true calling, wouldn’t it? Real life rarely works like that, though, and that’s not what’s happening here. I’m leaving for the most mundane, but also the most compelling, of reasons. I left my job because it’s the right thing for our family.

For four years, we slogged it out with my full-time job and my husband’s grueling work and travel schedule. We thought, as new parents naively do, that things would get easier as our son got older. As it turns out, things don’t get easier. Things just get different.

They stop being babies and become real people with their own personalities and needs. Like most children, our son needs structure and routine. He was born into campaign life, though, which allows for neither of those things.

We did the best we could for four years, cobbling together care with daycare, then full-time preschool, and the assistance of a nanny service. Many of my friends said, “I don’t know how you do it.” Well, here’s the thing…I couldn’t do it anymore. We needed a course correction.

I didn’t hate my job at all – far from it. I was growing listless because I’d been doing the same thing for a long time, but I had fantastic bosses. It was a nice place to work. I’ll probably write more about the experience later, but not yet. I’m still sorting all that out, in a good way. Leaving was hard, even though I was confident in my decision.

I am three days into my stay-at-home-mom gig, and it’s clear I will lose my shit if I don’t find something to do with myself. Oh, I have plenty to do. I’ve got closets that haven’t been cleaned out since the first wave of morning sickness hit in June 2011. (I did start cleaning out my closet today, thinking it would only take a couple of hours. I was so wrong. So very, very wrong. I got overly ambitious and emptied the entire closet onto my bed before I realized this endeavor would require days, rather than hours, to complete.) But I need something that is my own, independent of parenting and domestic obligations. I’m not sure exactly what that’s going to be yet. I keep going back to the movie Say Anything, and the immortal words of Lloyd Dobler:

“I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.”

I am seriously thinking of trying to make something of my party-favor and gift-giving obsession. And I’m going to keep writing. I see this time in my life as an opportunity to, as Elizabeth Gilbert says, follow my curiosity. We’ll see where it leads me.

In the meantime, I’ve got to shove the contents of my closet over to my out-of-town husband’s side of the bed so I can get some sleep. If you need me, you can find me under a pile of too old to be stylish, but not old enough to be vintage, handbags.