Thought - Stay-at-home

I hate home repair.  I have no idea what I am doing, it makes me feel totally inept, and I would much rather pay a professional a ton of money to just do the job for me.  Sadly, I'm an average American who can't afford to just hire someone to do minor repairs and so I find myself wading into the unknown world of pipes & screws more often than I would like.  On these occasions I often find myself wandering around Home Depot, searching in vain for the washer that will fix all my problems.  And when I'm there I invariably thank God, my wife, my luck, that I don't have to work there; that I have a much better job.

It's not Home Depot specifically that I would hate to work at, it's anywhere.  Catering to customers, sucking up to your bosses, trying to act busy when you're doing nothing, trying to appear knowledgeable and interested about subjects you hate.  I've worked hard at stupid jobs before, and I couldn't imagine doing it right now.  How much would I hate my life if I had to work a meaningless 9-5 where I didn't make a difference, where I didn't do something I was interested in, where I didn't have any fun, and where it wouldn't matter if I disappeared off the face of the Earth.  We wonder why people are depressed; look at what they have to do the majority of the time they're awake.

But not me.  I have a good job.  I stay at home, I keep the house running smoothly, I take care of my children, and I play for a living.  Not a bad way to spend your work week.  Quite often I read Facebook posts about the hard work of being a stay-at-home parent, how we're doing a large number of thankless jobs all at once for no pay and no time off.  And while this is pretty much true, we also have the best job in the world.  What we do matters, it makes a difference.  We get to interact with our kids & teach them every single day, shaping them into the adults they're going to be.  We get to play, make believe, color, dance, sing, wrestle, snuggle, watch movies, all with the people that we love most in the world.

Of course it's hard work staying at home.  I don't have to go into all the gross, tedious, and difficult tasks I have to do every single day; you can imagine.  But there are so many benefits, so many reasons why this is such an awesome job, especially when compared to what else I might be doing day in & day out.  So I'm the lucky one.  I'm lucky that my wife works hard to support our family, that my kids are fun to be around, that I get to see them more than most parents get to see their children, and that I don't have to work at some stupid job that I hate and that makes my life worse.  My job makes my life more enjoyable and not too many people can say that.