I guess I am doing things a bit backwards. When many people my age are contemplating retirement, I am trying to get into the paid workforce. I am seeing it as a new chapter, not a tapering off. Our vaccinations are complete, the nest is empty once again, both daughters settled into their own places. At age 63 going on 64, I am busy scanning various job boards. I have lost count of how many applications I have filled out online. I have had several conversations and some interviews, but no offers yet. It's a little like going the wrong direction on a one-way street, not going in the direction I am expected to go. But I see myself as retiring from full-time parenting, and ready to move on to the next thing.
I could go back to the volunteer work I was doing before. It was fulfilling and purposeful, and I enjoyed the people and the work itself. But now we have a financial need. His work is not paying much, so I need to step in to help in some way. I wish years ago I had known this was coming, when we had money for re-training. Now I am feeling lost, with not quite enough skills to get the kind of job for pay that I was doing in my volunteer work. Not yet, anyway.
To get skills training at this point would have to require certainty that it would pay off to justify the investment. I oscillate between dreaming of possibilities and overwhelming hopelessness and panic. He is job searching too, also with no offers yet. What are we going to do? This question haunts me.
Yesterday, our daughter got accidentally left behind at her group home. She called me, scared. I called the office and left a message. My call was returned later by a very upset and apologetic director who promised to look into why this happened and get back to me. I dropped what I was doing and drove over there to get her. I took her to dayhab. What happened should never have happened, but it did. Thank goodness she knows how to use a phone. Now we are in a quandary as to what to do about this. Sincere apologies have been made, and it turned out to be a complicated mix-up, but the idea that it could happen at all is needless to say, very concerning. In general, this company has been very safety-conscious. There are some problems to work out though, and we are working out in our minds the best way to get those changes made reliably. The idea of pulling her out and bringing her back home with us was of course my initial thought, but the idea of depriving her of a life around her peers seems regressive. Things have to be so bad that even she wants out before I can feel okay about uprooting her again.
Of course, this has to be balanced against our need to both be working. Sigh...
