Welcome, New York Times Motherlode blog readers!

Visits to this blog have spiked over the past day or so, no doubt thanks to the discussion on Motherlode, the parenting blog in the New York Times. A couple of weeks ago, writer Lisa Belkin launched an online book club, and chose as the inaugural book "TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career and the Conflict of Modern Motherhood," a collection of essays by mothers writing about working, caring for children, and a bunch of other subjects. One of them is an essay by me.

(By the way, it's obviously been, ahem, a while since I last posted here. I'd have probably managed to return from the lapse a bit more subtly had I not chosen to headline my previous post with a reference to, um, Mother's Day. Turns out that working at a new job, single parenting two teenagers, maintaining a house, doing a bunch of freelance projects and taking care of spring planting and lawn maintenance is more time consuming than you might think. I'm going to try to do better.)

Anyway, thanks for stopping by! The Motherlode discussion has generated some interesting comments, roughly half of them negative (approximately the same proportion I saw on Salon in response to my essay). The negative ones in particular share some common themes, and in the next few days, I'd like to consider at least a couple of those topics them in more depth. Meanwhile, I'd love to hear your opinions.

First up, the issue of "whining." Why are women so often charged with whining when they discuss the challenges and/or internal conflicts they face trying to balance career and motherhood? Is voicing any sort of complaint intrinsically whiny, or is it a matter of tone? Are there any situations when men are commonly accused of whining or, if not, why not? Why is the accusation of whining so often paired with a description of the supposed whiner as "privileged"? What exactly constitutes privilege, and is there some socioeconomic level at which negative thoughts about motherhood and career can be expressed without seeming to whine?

Let me have your thoughts, whiny or otherwise!

But wait -- have I even mentioned "TORN" yet?

I don't think I have. Tell you what, I've been so busy with my new job (which a couple of weeks ago went from an easygoing part-time gig to -- temporarily -- a more-challenging-what-with-everything-else-full-time gig), with a bunch of freelance work, with my sons' ridiculously intense after-school sports schedules, with going to a favorite uncle's funeral in Athens, GA, two weeks ago, with being out of town all last week (Eureka Springs, AR, with a group of old friends -- really fun until two of us were thrown by horses; I sustained only bruising but, sadly, my friend Beth broke her pelvis), coming home to a dining-room table blanketed a foot thick with newspapers, magazines and mail ... so busy, anyway, that I've done a crappy job of keeping up this blog AND of doing my part to spread the word about

TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood 

It's a wonderful collection of essays about, well, just what the title says, a.k.a. the challenges of work-family balance, a.k.a. the impossibility of having it all. My essay, "Regrets of a Stay-at-Home Mother" was a last-minute addition after it was published in Salon, and I'm very proud to be a part of it.

The book was well-reviewed today in the Los Angeles Times, which mentioned my piece in a nice way. (I didn't exactly "leave journalism" -- just quit my full-time job -- but since you called me "refreshingly candid" I'll forgive you, LAT!).

Reading my essay in a bookstore

If you're in the Northfield, MN, area on Wednesay night at 7:30, you can hear me and fellow contributor Shannon Hyland-Tassava reading the essays we contributed to the newly published "TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood."

As you can see, the bookstore is called "Monkey See, Monkey Read," which may cause some confusion ("No no, MY name is KATY Read"). But it should be fun!

http://www.monkeyread.com/

Good news on the job front

I know it’s lame to start a post with an apology and/or excuse for going so long without posting, but here goes: Sorry I’ve gone so long without posting. I’ve been busy.

The good news is that I’ve been busy … with work!

Those of you who saw my essay “Regrets of a stay-at-home mom” on Salon or one of the other places it appeared or was discussed will know what a welcome turn of events this is. As I wrote in that essay, which is about the financial risks parents take when they give up work to care for children, I mentioned that since 2008, when I got divorced and moved back to Mineapolis, I had sent out countless resumes resulting in but a tiny handful of interviews, that I’d been passed over for jobs I wouldn’t have considered in my 20s, that I’d tried but failed to land jobs that would have paid $20,000 lower my last full-time salary, 15 years ago.

How things can change in a few months—a few months in which, not coincidentally, a Salon essay about your miserable job prospects and pathetic finances goes slightly viral, gets passed around by friends, so it gets noticed by editors at your local paper as well as reprinted on its Sunday op-ed section, the local paper being the workplace out of all local workplaces for which your job skills happen to be most ideally suited.

That’s how I came to be hired as a writer for the niche products department of the Star Tribune, my local paper in Minneapolis, where I started work last week.

What are niche products, you’re probably wondering. They’re the special sections the paper puts out now and then throughout the year, on subjects such as aging, health and wellness, autos, back-to-school preparations. These sections were created, originally, as vehicles for advertising. At one time they contained nothing but advertising. Gradually they evolved, first acquiring bland filler and then better freelance-written pieces. A few months ago, the newspaper made them part of the editorial department, with an editor and now, a writer. Me.

It’s a wonderful job in so many ways. The work, I think, is going to be fun—we’re inventing from the ground up a product for which the bar, historically, has been set low. That lends the enterprise a giddily freeing sort of creativity. How good can we make these things? It’s entirely up to us!

Frankly, as someone who has foot-tall stacks of unread magazines in at least three rooms of my house, 60 books in my Amazon shopping cart (that’s not even counting the ones I’ve already purchased, but not yet read), 23 tabs currently open on my computer screen (which is less than usual, actually), a dining room table covered with newspapers and other assorted pieces of paper with words on them, I have no interest in foisting additional writing on the world unless I can make it as worth reading as possible. That’s the fun challenge of the job.

Also, the job is part time, a great way to segue back into the workforce. I can schedule my 25 hours a week just about whenever I’d like (“The only thing I can tell you for sure is that you can’t do them all in one day,” said my easygoing editor), which makes my work-family balance relatively easy to maintain (and by “easy” I mean “impossible,” though by "relatively," I mean "slightly less impossible than if I worked a rigid full-time schedule"). And I can fill my so-called “free time” with freelance assignments and personal projects like essays, a memoir and, er, blogging.

Put it this way: If this job had been available 15 years ago, I might never have given up a steady paycheck for freelancing in the first place.

Oh, there are a few downsides. Salaries in the niche products area are capped about midway up the guild scale—to keep the products competitive with similar publications—so although my hourly wage is actually a bit higher than it was 15 years ago (and much higher than the wage offered by literally all of would-be employers who ultimately rejected me), my paycheck will still be smaller than if I worked, as I used to, as a regular newspaper reporter. Because I’m part time, I don’t get health insurance, so for now I’m stuck continuing to throw away $200 a month for a private policy with a deductible so high that the only way I’ll ever receive benefits is if something terrible happens to me. And although writing for sections designed to be profitable seems to me a perfectly valid strategy for practicing journalism in the face of the industry’s current business-model crisis, you can probably guess that mine is not the highest status job in the newsroom. I may not win a Pulitzer anytime soon, and don’t look for my picture on the side of a bus.

But so what? It’s a better job than all of the jobs I interviewed for, better than most of the jobs I sent resumes to, better than most of the jobs in the entire world, for that matter. In fact, for me right now—and, as I say this, I’m knocking furiously on the laminated particleboard or whatever it is my desk is made of—this job feels ludicrously perfect.

Welcome to the conversation!

Welcome to What I Should Be Doing Instead, a blog about the choices women make in our lives, what influences them, and why everybody else seems to have an opinion about them.

A little background: Years ago, I started noticing that I often felt restless and guilty about how I was spending my time, whatever it was I was doing. However important or fun or even absolutely necessary my activity was, I kept feeling as if, instead of that, I should be doing something else. I would be cleaning the kitchen, say, but feel like I should be working on a writing project. If I was working, I should have been hanging out with my kids. If I was with my kids, I should have been loading the dishwasher. Or whatever. You get the idea. Maybe you’ve experienced the same thing.

Some explanations for this phenomenon, I know, are simple enough. Stress. The pressures of modern life. Trying to juggle motherhood and career. The siren song of the internet.

But at some point I figured out there's another contributing factor: the many loud and conflicting messages about what I should do, about how I should look and eat and dress and work and exercise and cook and decorate my house and raise my children. Oh, these messages aren’t always addressed directly to me, as in “Katy, here’s what you should do.” Usually, they’re directed at women in general, particularly mothers. In many cases, I’ll freely admit, I seek them out myself. The messages come from TV programs, from magazines and newspapers and web pages, from books, from friends and relatives, and occasionally from total strangers.

I want to explore why this happens – why women, seemingly more than men (though we can discuss the differences later) and mothers, more than women without children (ditto), so often get told what we should do and who we should be. And why, often, we invite this instruction.

So I had been mulling over a blog on this subject for a while. Then a few weeks ago, something happened that sharpened my focus and spurred me into action.

On Jan. 5, I published an essay on Salon.com called “Regrets of a stay-at-home mom,” (subhead: “Consider this a warning to new moms: Fourteen years ago, I ‘opted out’ to focus on my family. It was a mistake.”) In it, I explained that I had left a full-time job as a newspaper reporter in 1996 to be with my then-small sons and had worked part time, as a freelance writer, since then. Now, I wrote, I’m divorced and struggling to find a steady job in a tough economy, holding a resume that does not show seamless full-time employment. So, I said in the Salon piece, although I cherish the time I was able to spend with my children and am deeply thankful I was able to experience so much of their early lives, I am now facing the fact that exchanging full-time work for unpaid caregiving endangered my financial security. Or, as I put it more bluntly in the essay, my sons and I had some wonderful times together, but now I lie awake worrying that I’m permanently financially screwed.

The essay got a lot of attention.

Readers left 240 comments in the first 24 hours after the piece was posted, after which Salon closed the comment thread. Most of the comment writers held strong opinions about my essay, many of them decidedly critical, and the conversation was, er, lively, to say the least (more specifics in a later post).

Elsewhere, though, reactions were overwhelmingly positive. More than 5,000 people clicked the Facebook "like" button. I received nearly 100 email messages through my website, all but one or two wonderfully supportive, many from people facing similar predicaments. Mentions of my piece bounced around in emails, on Twitter and Facebook, on more than 50 blogs. NPR's Robin Young interviewed me for "Here and Now" (hasn't aired yet -- I'll post a date when I hear anything). Samantha Parent Walravens offered to include my piece in an upcoming anthology she's editing called "TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood" (out in May from Coffeetown Press).

I’m not sure if all of this officially qualifies as “going viral.” I’m certainly no Susan Boyle, or kid riding home from the dentist. I’m not even Amy Chua, whose book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” and controversial excerpt in the Wall Street Journal elbowed me out of the motherhood-news spotlight a couple of days later.

Still, the brief fuss was fun, and very encouraging. Mainly because the reactions reinforced my long-held suspicion that the subject of mothers’ unpaid caregiving—how much they do, how much they “should” do, what financial sacrifices it entails and what society owes or does not owe mothers in return—has not received enough public discussion. Not nearly enough.

So that will be the first item on our agenda here. I welcome those who have stopped in to join the conversation and always feel free to express your opinions, whatever they may be. I love a good debate!