Conundrums of a Stay-at-home Introvert

[matril]

I have too much free time.

This has been a problem since I graduated from college. Luke was about three months old then, and I was eager to do what I'd always planned on doing - devote the bulk of my time to parenting, while any remaining time could be spent on the solitary activities I loved. Reading, writing, jigsaw puzzles, music. I like solitary activities. And that hasn't changed. But it is possible, shockingly, to get too much of a good thing.

Even with a baby, I wasn't as busy as I thought I'd be, because we had to live with my parents for a year while my husband applied to grad schools. I was extremely grateful to my parents for letting us stay with them, but it was rough for all of us. I felt like I'd moved backwards in terms of adult behavior. I had no household of my own. I went from full-time classes to almost no scheduled stuff at all. I have self-disicpline when someone else is setting the deadlines and responsibilities, but it turns out that when it's all up to me, I become very lazy.

Well, then we moved to Massachusetts for grad school, got our own place again, and then I was pregnant with Emma. It got better, with a house of my own to tend to and two children and so on, but in spite of what I'd heard every other mother say, I still had more free time then than I did at any other point in my life (other than, I assume, those few years before I started kindergarten that I don't remember). When Luke started school, there was even more free time. Ryan was born, things were busier, but they all grew and became more independent, and now, in September, they will all be at school all day long.

What in the world am I going to do with myself? And how can I complain about it when everyone else in the world is insanely busy and hates me for complaining about the opposite problem? I've been there; I've been so busy I could barely take a breath, and thought longingly of having just a single day without a packed schedule. My past self would probably hate me too. But here I am.

I do love having ample time for reading, writing, puzzles, music - you can add yarnwork to the list now that I've learned to knit and crochet. I have tons of ideas for writing lately, particularly since I've gotten into a new fandom and churned out buckets of fanfic. I have a novel that, with some revision, might be ready to send out queries for. But even I, an extreme introvert, can only fill so much of the day with solitary activities.

There are the necessities - dishes, laundry, cleaning - that I'll do when I have to but never gleefully. I don't look forward to having everyone else out of the house so I can go and tackle that pile of clutter. Oh, sure, there's enough clutter that I could probably spend several straight days on clearing it out. That sounds perfectly horrifying. I can spend maybe an hour, at most, on cleaning before wanting to flee.

A job? Yech. My pitiful qualifications would limit me to standing behind a cash register. I did that for about a year, and it was sucking the life out of me. Yes, I need to get out of the house and interact with people. Even I recognize that, much as I'm inclined toward the hermit lifestyle. But is there any way to have mild, comfortable interaction without tremendous effort on my part? No one is going to come to my door to randomly befriend me. I have to reach out to people. That's terrifying. No one is going to reach out to me because they don't know I need it, but an irrational part of me says it's because they don't want to interact with me.

Oh, and most other people are busy during the day with, you know, jobs and parenting and important things.

I don't want to be a complete ingrate. I feel very, very fortunate that our financial circumstances aren't so dire that we need a dual income, and that my husband supports my desire to be at home for our kids. I'm very happy to have kids and be a mother. I love our house even if I don't keep it pristine and tidy and full of cutesy crafty decorations. Overall, I'm glad I have the life I'm living. It's just.... you know.

Ideal scenario? I get a literary agent, start getting publishing deals, and suddenly my hobby becomes my career. Then I'll go on book signings and such, which would provide social interaction in just the sort of venue I'd appreciate. Until then, I'm going to be squirming here at home, somewhere in between fear of the outside world and boredom with the inward.

Comments

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

At least your ideal scenario is better than mine; even if suddenly people loved my short stories, I *still* wouldn't be making anything more than grocery money! In the meantime, just in case you haven't thought about it -- maybe paging at the library? You get to be around books all the time, snarf up any interesting ones for yourself before reshelving them, and while you're around people you don't have to interact with them all the time; in fact, since your job is to get the books back on the shelf, the librarians really prefer it if you don't talk to people too much! I know some pages are volunteers, but you can get paid for it if there are spaces open, and it can't hurt to ask. Plus you then get to feel virtuous for helping the public library :).

I can't believe all of your kids are going to be in school next year -- I've been starting to cast ahead to when Phoebe becomes full-time school age (three or four years, but still) and since the writing/blogging is never going to pay, as much as I like it, I've been wanting to go back to school and qualifying for an actual specific job instead of just being nebulously and unemployable Well Rounded In The Humanities. That was actually my original plan a while ago, except that first Veronica and then Phoebe ended up delaying things, not that I'm complaining. Have you thought about shooting for something like that, eventually? I know a lot of special ed mothers who end up going into special ed teaching/speech therapy etc, but don't think I've really got the personality for either. There are lots of other things to do, though.

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

Eep, I forgot to ask -- what's your new fandom, and could you link to any of the stories?

[matril.livejournal.com]

It's the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, which I believe I mentioned here a few months ago. I was startled to find myself so drawn in by it, because as a Pride and Prejudice fanatic I assumed I would turn up my nose at a silly, gimmicky modern adaptation. Nope. I've become utterly obsessed with it, and remain so even months after the series ended. It's actually one of the best adaptations I've seen, because even while modernizing it they hit most of the important notes of the original. It's several hours longer than even the next longest adaptation, so they cover stuff that inevitably gets cuts out of other versions (they have the scene with Darcy's "I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun" speech! My heart melts!)

I think the reason I've gotten into writing fan fic so much is twofold. First, it's a relatively small fandom, so I don't feel like my stories are buried under mountains of other fics, and second, since the story is told exclusively through video blogs, there's a lot of behind-the-scenes holes to fill in, which to me is one of the best purposes of fan fiction. On the other hand, one of my favorite stories is a future fic, the shamelessly autobiographical one where I basically give Lizzie and Darcy my children and see what happens. (People kept speculating that Darcy's social awkwardness meant he had Asperger's, so I couldn't help thinking, Well, what if one of their kids was actually autistic?)

My ff.net profile is here (http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1911804/Matril) (with one lonely Harry Potter story and 12 LBD fics) and my AO3 account, which I just set up a few weeks ago, is here. (http://archiveofourown.org/users/Matril/pseuds/Matril)

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

I ... had never actually watched them before and now I'm on Episode 24. It's fantastic -- I'm anxiously awaiting the reappearance of George Wickham, Nefarious Swim Team Guy. I wonder what "dirt" he'll have on Darcy? I read some of your fics (not worried about spoilers :)). I thought they were really effective, especially the autism one, even without knowing about the originals. You know, I could see them having an autistic child (and I loved Lady Catherine turning up during the last birth!) I've wondered occasionally if Jane Austen's brother George was autistic; he had some unspecified disability which kept him from living with the family, and apparently wasn't able to speak but lived a long and pretty healthy life at what was basically a 19th century group home. In Claire Tomalin's bio, she points out that Jane mentioned "talking with my fingers" and wondered if George may have known some signs.

Speaking of such, the school system has Daniel classified as autistic now. It's basically a classification of exclusion at this point -- he's outgrowing the "developmental delay" classification, and since does well at schoolwork and isn't a behavioral problem they can't put him under MR or EBD, but he does need a lot of social help and so ... well, I suppose we could only dodge the label for so long. I did remember how a long while back you said that when you were feeling less than great you thought of Aspergers et al as "wimpy autism" and I have to say, I kind of felt the same way. It's just such an enormous classification now, especially since Aspergers is being done away with as a separate category. I should probably write about this on my own LJ; I am awash in mixed feelings.

[matril.livejournal.com]

They do suck you right in, don't they? I started watching when they were around Episode 55 (which is right before Darcy shows up, not to spoil anything ;). I watched a few and thought, "Eh, it's kind of fun, but why only three Bennet sisters?" then watched a few more....and a few more....and then I was thoroughly hooked. That's very intriguing about Jane Austen's brother; I didn't really know much about her life other than the basics. I should pick up that biography!

That's good news/rough news about Daniel. I know what you mean about the mixed feelings. On the one hand, the label doesn't change what was already true. On the other hand, it feels like it does, and a word like "autistic" is so heavy, so fraught with implications. I've come to realize that Luke, in some regards, has it easier than kids on the milder end of the spectrum. I read once that kids with low-functioning autism don't understand social interaction and don't care. Kids with Asperger's (or whatever the official designation is nowadays) don't understand social interaction but dearly want to. Not that I can be sure of that without getting into Luke's head and knowing how he actually views this crazy world we all live in, but he certainly seems blasé about how his various quirks are perceived.

And Luke is so obviously impaired almost at first glance, whereas someone like my nephew, a teenager who I didn't even know had any issues until two years ago, comes across as perfectly normal most of the time, and then says something so bizarre that it's easy to assume he's just being weird and difficult on purpose. Put more succinctly, I recognize that high-functioning autism presents a different set of challenges, not necessarily an easier set. I hope the classification has been opening doors for Daniel; that should be what labels actually do. Not that those opening doors make the sting of such labels any less painful. *hugs*

[matril.livejournal.com]

If I did ever go back to school, it would probably be for a library science degree. I should look into what's available at my library - it's actually one of the few places in walking distance of our house. I admit even something as introvertedly inclined as that makes me twitchy, because it would involved talking to people and taking initiative and such. Wow, my people skills are in really bad shape.

It is insanely surreal to think of all my kids being in school. Comparing it to my own siblings and my mother's experience, which I inevitably find myself doing, she had my older sister and me in her late twenties, then a five year gap, then my little brother and little sister. So by the time the youngest was in kindergarten, my mom was forty. And here I am, entering that stage of life at barely thirty-two. We're not so bad off financially that I have to get a job, but definitely not so well off that we could afford college tuition for another degree for me right now. My mother eventually went back to school and got a teaching degree, so now that all the kids are grown, she's quite busy with teaching chemistry and physics. I'm not sure that I'd want to go into teaching, and I know that special ed wouldn't work for me. But I know I have to figure out something, or I'm going to go insane.