Throwback Thursday

One of my favorite parts of working at One Life to Live in the last bunch of years that I was there was my job's combination of production and editing. In a given week, I would spend several days in the studio, working on the show as it was shot, and on the remaining days, I would edit shows, create edited playbacks, and screen shows for air. While all the parts of my job dealt with the same show, my roles were as different as night and day. On a studio day, I would be surrounded by people, and I would talk almost constantly in the process of getting what we wanted. On an edit day, I might spend hours alone, tweaking and figuring, before finally showing my work to a producer. It was a lovely combination, in which I could escape from chaos, and then run right back to it, all in the name of doing my job. It satisfied both the people skills and the figure it out alone parts of me. And while it was a combination I may never have in a work environment again, I see glimpses of it as I navigate, once again, through the combination of parenthood and job search that I'm facing now.
 
Parenthood and employment, I suppose, can always be a challenging combination. The restraint that you may have to exercise at work faces the "get messy" attitude you may need at home. The focus on your own accomplishments at work gives way to a focus on your children's accomplishments at home. Today, however, as I immersed myself in the needs of kids, putting my own job search needs on hold till tomorrow, I felt that dichotomy I once felt at One Life to Live--a fairly complete studio focus on my studio days, and a complete edit focus on my edit ones. A realization that the two things might have to work together, but the pleasure of sometimes being able to focus on them separately.
 
It is unlikely that I will ever find a work situation like my One Life one again. But my current in-between situation reminds me how important it is to give the separate parts of my life the time and attention they each deserve. While one may inform another, as the studio days and the edit days once did, each deserves a singular focus, at least some of the time, and I am learning how to give them that.
 
Who knows how long it will be until my balance shifts again--we don't always know when things will change. In the meantime, I am trying to embrace this current dichotomy, and give both parts of my current daily job as much attention as I can.