Mezla PigDog, on 18 October 2020 - 01:39 PM, said:
What's the schooling sitrep? Are your kids full time at home? Because I recollect that feeling from when I was on maternity leave full time at home with a kid. It was while I was adjusting to no longer being my own person. On weekends when Mr PigDog was home I sometimes caught myself staring out of the window at the car thinking "I could literally just go".
Reading that sounds like I had postnatal depression or something but I didn't. It is the only sane reaction to family life sometimes.
Exactly. It isn't really a depression. It is more the feeling of being locked in.
I now have a remote, home based job (which is wonderful). However, that also means I never really leave. Even my ever increasing nightly walks are along the same, safest street routes. And all social interaction is pretty much online (no in person contact). I haven't (as is probably true for all of you) had a an honest to god, real week long vacation since I first met my wife. And that week long vacation (nearly 3 years ago) was with all four kids. There have been three day mini-vacations, sure, but since my wife's job is all night 2 days on, 2 days off, 3 days on, 3 days off, long trips, real vacations, even weekend getaways, etc, are nigh impossible.
Add to this the confusion of both being divorced and having our kids in and out of the house on roughly the same schedule as her work, and you end up with a constantly changing, but somehow firmly entrenched, life style. Can't leave this house, this city, this state, or worst of all, this country. I don't have an in-person friend network in this city (never have) and my wife and I essentially work opposite shifts, sleeping while the other works.
But I am not terribly lonely, thankfully. I like the solitude for the most part. I just can't use that intermittent solitude to escape and adventure. I want to be in the Pacific Northwest or near the Rockies, hiking and maybe learning some wilderness stills. Instead, I am getting bored of this neighborhood and frustrated with the messy status quo of a house with only one neat person out of 2-6 inhabitants. I think I see the course of life for the years between now and child emancipation, and long for the sense of adventure and freedom of my youth. But don't we all...