My new worklife - 2023 12 26

 

It has taken two years for me to figure out how to live and work as a family caregiver for my frail elder Mom. There is a structure starting to emerge for my days and potential lines of self-employment that are coming into view that fit with that structure.

First - I was not planning on retiring from my work as a project management consultant. Having lived with a hidden disability all my working life, I had never had the kind of consistent employment and financial security that would have funded a retirement. I was planning on continuing with my consulting work into my 70s as it felt manageable and I figured I was likely to get better with age : ) 

Mom moved in on November 1, 2021, the year I turned 65. I was still working full time and weathering the disruptions of Covid to my paid workflow. During 2022 it became clear that my main client work was wrapping up and I realized I did not have the inspiration to try to find another client or apply for a job in project management. I was busy with taking care of Mom over 500 hours a month. I did not have the mental, emotional and physical bandwidth to figure out additional work with an external client. I had some very part-time, intermittent management consulting work, even that I was finding too taxing - online meetings, dressing up to attend events, showing up for appointments on time. 

Throughout 2023 I started applying what resources I had left after family caregiving - typically an hour or two a day - to developing work ideas that I could pursue in an overlap with taking care of Mom: I could do them from home, I could do them on my own schedule, I could use my experience, education, skills and enthusiasm to create work that would augment my cashflow but not exhaust my day to day resources.

Second - When Mom moved in with us I was new to family caregiving and she was in an extremely frail state. She was so frail her doctor put her on the palliative care registry, she was not expected to live 6 months. The first year of her family caregiving focused on recovery from pneumonia, a significant COPD exacerbation, UTI, deafness, and disabling arthritis. The second year her family caregiving focused on establishing new household routines, maintaining my own health and figuring out how to engage family in supporting the mission so that I did not have to carry the entire burden of caregiving. We are now entering our third year of family caregiving and I am feeling much more confident and able to cope with the demands of providing 24/7 caregiving infrastructure in our home. Mom is extremely frail, but she is also reliable, careful, and cheerful. We have sorted out the home support caregiving schedule to be less intrusive and we have consolidated Mom's accessibility equipment and needs.

Third - Due to the demands of family caregiving, it is extremely difficult to carve out time for extended work focus. Over time, it becomes harder and harder to think and plan because each day is a constant exercise in context shifting. That said, when there has been an oasis of time because a family member has taken Mom for an overnight or an afternoon, those moments have allowed for these energetic bursts of inspiration and concept development, to be able to identify potential lines of work that are intrinsically creative, intellectually demanding, skillful, and exploratory. Thus, over the last year certain areas of work have become accessible, and then, because they are a necessary break from caregiving, they have led to developing work infrastructure in relation to family caregiving. It is these bursts of idea consolidation and hypothesis validation that have gotten me to the place where I can almost see a sustainable path for family caregiving and paid home-based work.

The underlying values that tie all my various initiatives together are guided by my desire to build strength in my family, strength in my community, and strength in our humanity.

We'll see how it all plays out. We can only work one day at a time and make the most of it.