I am on my third job in a year since coming back form paternity leave, and I am pretty sure I am going to lose my current job soon, if I don't rage quit first. I've had to take multiple days off for mental health – completely debilitating panic attacks happening in slow-motion, – and everyone seems to just hate me now. I used to excel at people relationships – both in person and digital – but now I am receiving so much verbal abuse. My last employer called me a “liar” before firing me that day. I keep hearing I have an “attitude problem” but I'm just tired and unenthusiastic. I'm still good at what I do, but it seems like I have lost the ability to alleviating management's anxiety, and as we know that's the only thing that actually matters.
I am paying daycare to give me the privilege to work a 40 hour work week. This makes no sense.
And it's never enough! Everyone is pushing me to work 10 hours day, stay as long as necessary to meet arbitrary and unrealistic deadlines and I just can't. There is a tiny human who needs love and care, and my partner cannot be expected to bear that burden alone, they have a job too!
I wish I could go on Universal Basic Income so badly. I don't need much, just enough to pay my share of the bills, because I'm busy raising a human. I really don't understand how free subsidized daycare isn't a much bigger political issue because it would be revolutionary to any economy (but I know that's parenting is historically “women's work” and politicians don't actually want women to have jobs and independence. Next thing they'll want is the right to vote!).
What's happening here? Am I just out of fucks to give about about my career? Has my ability to pretend to give a shit been taken away? I am just too tired to be pleasant? Or has becoming a parent just radically shifted my brain chemistry?
TL:DR
I love being a parent. It is extremely rewarding and enjoyable for me, but I have lost the ability to hold down a job. The two are in constant conflict and I honestly don't care about anything other than being a parent. Is there a way I can make that a reality?