Sometime in the past decade I fear I've been becoming obsolete. I couldn't tell you when it started happening and there wasn't any grand moment when that realization smacked me in the face; rather it has been a gradual slide into the ether.
I lost my job writing for the newspaper shortly before the pandemic. For months and months I had toyed with leaving -- homeschooling my two kids along with all the housewifely duties was an actual full-time job and even 20 hours a week writing was a lot to keep up with. Despite that, when my column Craft Beer and Beyond got canned, it was still pretty devastating after five years of steady and regular income. It hurt, being told there was no longer a place
for my column.
It was reliable. Dependable. Stable.
It was money I was making. It felt like a safety net if I needed it.
During the pandemic, freelance writing gigs became hard to find because thousands of new people were doing it and it was nice to step away and just focus on my kids and spend that extra time with them doing all the things -- field trips, outdoors groups, hangouts with friends.
And it was during that time of intensive focus that I realized they both needed more. More than what I could give them academically, especially as they started moving into more advanced maths and scientific studies. I wanted them to have access to all that a public education could offer that I could not: chemistry lab, biology dissections, steady friendships with peers they see every single day. And not just in a co-op form where other parents were teaching classes. I wanted to see them thrive under the tutelage of those who've chosen education as their life's work. Not that there isn't anything wrong with co-ops (I know I'll offend someone, somewhere, unintentionally) but it wasn't a great fit for us.
Homeschooling was hard in terms of socialization. That isn't to say making friends was hard, because my kids had plenty. But maintaining those relationships was hard because every single element of a homeschooling experience not only comes down to the educating parent seeking out and finding opportunities, and taking kids to those opportunities -- sometimes to the tune of more than an hour's drive away -- but also relying on the other party or parties to follow through with the opportunities. The kids have tasted so many social disappointments throughout their homeschooled life because of plans falling through with friends. They've lost friends due to my own problems with their friends' moms. I carry a whole lot of hurt and rejection tucked inside my pocket.
Adult friendships sometimes become obsolete, too.
When COVID hit, it swept so much of what had once been reliable away with its swift descent.
I think, collectively, the world, us, we went through a psychological upheaval since 2019. A lot of us really examined ourselves and our situations. It was probably the deepest dive many of us took, into the shadows that normally exist in the periphery. I began asking myself some of those tough questions.
What if I'm not enough? What if this life I've spent so much time and effort cultivating isn't enough? What if I need more, and they need more?
And the conclusion I came to is that I wasn't enough and it wasn't enough.
My kids needed more than I could give.
Not of love, of course. Fathers love too, and deeply, as well as non-birth parents, but there is an unnamable bond that a mother has with a child she held in her womb, an invisible tether that forever sets our relationship apart if only for the ancient birth magic of it. For nearly a year this human alien grew and formed and hiccupped inside my body; pressed into my ribcage, hands and feet stretched out against the skin of my stomach so firmly that you could see the individual fingers and toes.
Now both kids are in public school and I could string together a lengthy set of words detailing how well they're doing and how fabulously they've adjusted. Suffice to say, for entering a completely different kind of education in what I've heard is one of the toughest grades, they've both found their people, are engaged and interactive, enjoy their teachers, and are doing things they never could have or would have done with me home educating them.
It is a Good Thing.
But now when I sit alone in the quiet, the feelings of obsolescence grow.
I know I am skilled at many things; a Jane of all trades. The useless facts I know abound, I'm great in the kitchen (except I still cry when trying to make falafel because it always falls apart on me in the oil), I always have projects going and am surprisingly capable at picking up new things like embroidery and other handcrafts, and I have the ability to sit down and write things that sometimes people want to read,
but there's still that lingering sense of losing myself when I should feel like I'm finding myself.
Recently, I dusted off my resume and applied for a big job that I knew was a long-shot, but I also knew would have been a perfect fit for my interests and capabilities. I haven't heard a peep about it; no interest from them whatsoever.
I'm not marketable anymore. From so many years of not working, I am just not marketable. No one wants me, at least in the kinds of jobs I'm interested in doing. My work history shows nothing in the past three years other than a spattering of freelance writing; before that the newspaper, and before that five years of freelance writing.
There is no space on a resume to put running a household, or managing meals, or crafting an education that suits your kids' strengths and weaknesses, or seeking out and cultivating experiences to benefit your kids both physically and mentally. There isn't a place for that in the real world workplace.
No one cares.
I have no post-high school education, unless you want to count that awfully dull sociology course that was the beginning and end of my college run. My work history includes being a customer service specialist for a flooring company (I created truckload and LTL shipments for my clients), international purchasing, working a ticket booth for a snorkel boat company, a cashier and gift-wrapper, managing a coffeeshop, a sales associate at clothing stores (where I was always told I needed to be more aggressive), and working at a Renaissance faire.
I've had so many fascinating and interesting jobs and all of that makes me love the person I've become, but none of that makes me marketable. A hiring agent sees all that and doesn't see a well-rounded individual, but someone who is uneducated, hasn't worked in years, and just isn't right for the position.
There are plenty of things to keep me busy. Boredom is a feeling I never have because there is always something to do. I'm currently training a puppy, and she is a handful. There are embroidery projects, a gingerbread cake asking me to mix it into existence, a long walk to take, and the household chores are forever staring at me.
But I'm becoming obsolete. Slipping into anonymity. Losing more marketability every single day. I'd love to write a book and fill it with words both wonderful and wise, with spells laced throughout and full of fascination, but I don't know how. Every time I try I lose steam, lose interest in my story, lose motivation to keep going because if I'm not invested then no one else will be either. Sometimes it feels like writing a book is the only option I have left, but I'm paralyzed.
And so continues my path of feeling obsolete.
There's no answer, obviously. No "try this" or "do that" to make it all better. But perhaps I'm not alone in these feelings, and you're sitting here with me and now you know it. You know you're not alone either. Maybe together we can rage against the dying of our light, somehow.
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