I miss the money and other side-effects of quitting glorious jobs

It takes years to unlearn toxic behaviours. Years of stillness to be less greedy; to avoid being rude to those who cannot answer back; to pause and honour a moment of beauty. To listen, to apologise..

I told a friend that a straightforward, honest sequel to the ‘How to have it all’ essay would be one titled ‘I miss the money’.

Let me confess: I do.

I also miss the glamour and casual self-importance of a structured ten-hour workday. I miss the easy sense of power. I miss having a one-line bio. I feel the loss of a visiting card. The plastic gatepass with a logo that opens doors everywhere. The fancy designation I had earned. Vice President, Training and Development, NDTV.

Was it easy quitting my job? Hardly.

It was like having a baby. They tell you it is perfectly natural, but everything feels strange. There is pain. It takes aeons for things to settle.

In the early days, it felt as if I had returned a borrowed superhero’s costume and walked into the street in everyday clothes, like a nobody.

Admittedly, my superhero life had developed some chinks. I had begun to notice that on the commute between work and home, I would sit by the edge of the back seat in my car, instead of relaxing or putting up my feet during the hour long drive. The urgency of con-calls that got us nowhere confused me. My dentist told me that I was grinding my teeth in my sleep.

Taking tough decisions is only the first step; it’s when the decisions move in with us and overstay their welcome that the party really begins.

I came home. I hated being home.

We were a mess, both the home and I.

I yelled at maids, I disliked everyone who rang the doorbell. I missed fully air-conditioned interiors. I made a few good salads. I didn’t know what I did any more.

Being at the bus stop to receive my children was no longer a novelty. The enthusiasm I would display was feigned. And the children knew it.

It is supposed to be the most uncomplicated of our loves—our love for our children. It is also the most vulnerable.

I read an email from a reader named Ritu—she listed everything she had achieved and wondered why she was still unhappy. She thought she would feel liberated when she quit her job and could own her own time, but ‘in the last five years of having left the job, I have barely been to shopping malls or to a beauty parlour—no more than I was doing before.’

I wrote back to her. Television shows may assault us, malls may deafen us, Internet ads may track us down everywhere—yet something stops us from spending an afternoon reading a glamour magazine while two attendants administer pedicures to our tired feet.

We realise that our sense of contentment is linked to personal growth.

Sure, I love the big things money can buy, but what really makes me clap my hands with glee are the childish delights of life—those that nurture the best version of me. I just needed to recover the confidence to admit them into my world.

‘Look, Natasha, this isn’t working for you at all,’ my friend Shefali said one day. She had come to meet me at home and then insisted that we walk to a coffee shop—to ‘take you out of the house’. Our third child was under a year old and I guess I looked desperate.

Shefali had her camera with her and she took a few pictures of me looking out from the glass wall of the coffee shop.

‘Staying at home is terrible for you,’ she said, putting down the camera. ‘You’ve tried it, you keep falling ill, you write strange status updates… now just give up this idea.’

‘No, no, I have to be here,’ I said to her. ‘I feel like I am putting broken pieces of myself back together.’ My voice cracked a little even as my words themselves sounded broken.

Sure, I was upset a lot, but just because I was no good at being at home didn’t mean I didn’t want to be there. I had rejected many of the hand-me-down ideas of how to run a family and raise children. I had said no-thank-you to new, lucrative work roles. In the middle of my life, I was starting from scratch.

It looked like I was doing nothing. But I was healing.

It wasn’t easy for us, as a family. I could see my husband’s struggle from a distance. I would say to him in my head: ‘You are desperate to live the life you had imagined before we became parents of little children. How about making choices because you have them, rather than making choices despite having them?’

Of course, I couldn’t see myself with the same clarity.

I knew what my husband and I had in common. We didn’t want to repeat the mistakes we thought our parents had made. But what did we want?

It takes years to unlearn toxic behaviours. It takes years of stillness to be less greedy; to avoid being rude to those who cannot answer back; to pause and honour a moment of beauty; to listen; to apologize; and to truly treasure what is precious.

I love being around other people’s children. I am goofy and cheerful. It’s not so effortless when they are my own. I am lost and distracted. This is a common, familiar experience for many adults. First, we are lost among our own peers and then, we feel that we have lost our children, too.

This brings me to another version of why I quit office and came back home. At a party where we were assigning each other animal personas, my best friend called me a Pomeranian. Here I was acting like a big shot, important person and my friend was telling me that I was still a silly little people-pleaser. It stung. More so, because I saw what she meant.

I needed new friends. Or I could accept that I needed to re-educate myself. The time was now.

(This essay is an excerpt from My Daughters’ Mum by Natasha Badhwar)
All photos by Shefali Bhushan. August, 2009)