Work

Work is one the toughest issues to work out satisfactorily I think. If only it was easy, or even relaively easy, to find work that paid enough to live on and that you could be passionate about. But despite great efforts, we have found it hard to be paid for our writing work meaning that one or both of us has to find other paid work to pay the bills. Ideally, this would involve us both working part-time and both looking after the children part-time, but realistically that has been hard to achieve. How to find 2 jobs which co-ordinate hours-wise and pay-wise with each other has proved impossible so far - though we're still looking out. So now that my husband is looking for a new job, again we have the dilemma of how much to compromise? It would be great even to just get a job which paid the minimum we need to live and gave him some hours free but this would probably be a 4 days a week job and we can't seem to find any of those at his level of work either. It seems to be full time or nothing.
Now that I've been out of the workforce for almost 6 years there's no way I can earn enough to keep the family, but surely I can earn more than my just-above minimum wage home-working job? Probably but then I'd have to find someone to look after the kids while I did it which would kind of defeat the whole object. Maybe I'll sell a book one day!
Inevitably, there is always a disadvantage with any job - either it involves travelling away from home, or it involves a commute, or it's too little money really, or it's for an unethical commercial business. Where to compromise? And how much? Maybe one day we'll get this issue sorted out. I hate the way it become central to our lives when it should just be a peripheral thing. Our life and our family are the most important things so how come jobs always loom so large? Oh yes, paying the bills, that's why.