How much of a man are you????

Sometimes you need a good shakeup in your life to see how much in this world is still messed up. Let me preface this with the fact that I at one time had one of the manliest jobs in the world. I was a bouncer and DJ for a local bar and had a very good track record. Even the true badasses treated me with respect, though they could probably tear me apart as easily as they did that barstool that said something about their mother.

Becoming a stay at home dad, so far, is the coolest thing I have ever done with my time. I get to cook (which I love to do), clean up, watch my monkey grow up a little each day instead of realizing he isn't a baby when he asks for the keys to my car. I am very happy with my daily life, though I do wish I could help financially get us out of debt, I still value what I am getting a chance to do.

Recently I have noticed a dramatic change in the way my "working" friends, both male and female think and act around me. They have seemingly decided that I have all the time in the world and they no longer need to worry about my schedule to plan for phone calls, computer help, or party time. When I tell them no they act as though I just don't like them anymore, because surely, I have all the time in the world now that I am not doing anything.

I am so amazed by these otherwise very cool, nice, thoughtful peoples ideas of what someone at home does all day, that I find myself defending all stay at home anythings. While I am sure my bon-bon consumption has increased 100%, and sure I know everything about who blair is sleeping with and that he is really a vampire, and I spend much of my day in my fuzzy bunny slippers, this does not mean I am not working as hard as they are. I still maintain a small computer network with multiple operating systems, and very crazy help tickets in my help desk. Though now they are filled out in crayon, the problems are still as frequent, and as weird, as they were when I "worked". The peanut and butter and fluff cd-rom just doesn't seem to be working, and the mouse that was dropped in the toilet doesn't work as well now.

So I don't see where changing jobs has womanized me, nor has it caused me to grow breasts, lose chest hair, or raise my voice and octave. I still like Soccer, F-1 racing, and a good FPS game. I still drink beer occasionally, scratch my ass, and blame all gas issues on the monkey.

I guess it is hard to see someone not making a paycheck and placing any value on what they do, because obviously if it were important, somone would pay you for it. That is how we assign importance and value to ourselves. The real difference between Tier III help desk and Network Administrator in most companies is $50,000 a year. That is how we measure their importance. It rarely has much to do with how much they know and more about how much they have convinced the upper management they are worth.

I may not make any money right now, but I am making a difference and working very hard. I am just as much a man as I was before becoming a SAHD. If my friends can't see that, I guess it is time for new friends who realize this strips none of my masculinity away, it just gives me a gift most don't get.

Has anyone else had to deal with this since becoming a SAHD?

And before you ask, that is not Sarah McLachlan playing in the background, ummm my wife must have left that on... yeah that's it can't you hear the Slipknot on my headphones???

Depression can suck it!!!!!

I seem to be really good at seeing the bright side of anything and keeping a positive outlook in life. This is a skill I have cultivated over many years of dealing with the bad and the unimaginable happenning throughout my life. My wife relies on it, my mom and dad expect it, and my kids wouldn't know what to do if I didn't encourage them through bullies, difficult teachers, and the pains of puberty while smiling. So why am I so depressed lately?

I lost a job I loved in July, though the newspaper industry is dying quickly and we all saw it coming, it still sucks. I loved going to work each day to find 10 new and unusual problems to fix. I loved when a new program had to go live and it wasn't playing nice. Everyone knew if the program or device was new and there were issues to call me and I would happily fix it. Solving virus, malware, and trojan problems was my favorite passtime because instead of just formatting the machine I liked to just fix it instead. Of course if time was an issue I would do a clean backup and then restore the original image to the computer, but still fun. I got to fix network issues and all kinds of custom software problems almost weekly. So all in all a really good job with really good people.

What am I doing now? Housework, spending awesome time getting to know my kids even better, spending much more time with my rockin wife, and studying to improve my IT superman skills. But for some reason keeping up my own servers, network, and multiple OS's just doesn't seem the same. I am in a funk and want so badly to get back to fixing stuff for people without losing my family time again. I guess this is horribly selfish of me to want both a job in IT and family time as the 2 seem mutually exclusive.

So now I am sitting here feeling like I am as marketable as a Heroin man action figure with real working needles and arm belt. It seems impossible that I was a real solutions person at some point and seem to have skills that just don't translate well to my resume. That makes me sad, but not as sad as knowing I have to give up my 4 hours with my two oldest kids just to get back what I had worked so hard to achieve before. So mr. happy is saying it, this sucks!!! But, I will be better after my coffee and the laundry is caught up. Who knows I may even fix a computer or two today just for fun.