I had my kids young at the ages of 20 & 23 and my old frustration was with people saying I should have “gone to college and gotten a real job before having kids” to be fair having kids wasn’t planned.. but I actually enjoyed working the “not real” job of bartending/waitressing. At the time I made more then enough to take care of us as a single mom. I spent everyday with my kids & doing things we liked. They never had to miss me because they’d be asleep with a sitter. Life felt so much.. better. Fast forward years later and I was able to take that bartending job and scale to management, then marketing/sales, start my own business, and now currently work in sales management making six figures. Got that “big girl” job nobody would stfu about my entire twenties. Here we are.. and my life somehow feels worse. I work ten hour shifts, four days a week, and I spend the next two days playing catch up and trying to care for my kids while exhausted since my job is.. exhausting. I spend the last day off in dread. Dreading going back, forcing myself to go back, just chasing the paycheck. Everything is so expensive currently. Bartending isn’t in the cards for me anymore. But jobs I can now be qualified for just are so unappealing. I want to find a new job but I feel so burnt out i can’t even begin. I know I might not be happy there either and I just feel so stuck. My business is good but it’s not great and it wouldn’t bring in nearly what I make at my job but my job also blocks me from satisfying requests for my business so it’s a lose lose all around. Anyways this is turning into a rant but really I just miss being able to sit in the sunshine with my kids. They spent summer in summer school/camp and I sat staring out my office window, in the ugliest office you could imagine (trust me), disassociating to get through.. just wishing we were together and wondering what the fck to do and how to make it better.