Advice from a 5 year old

It’s been a very strange day.  One week to the day from the announcement of my free agency, I found myself home doing my daily routine of connecting with people, reading job postings, searching articles, eating, going to the gym, and generally keeping busy.  Thursday is a challenge though because the kids are home.  One goes to half day kindergarten, then other is here.  My wife needed to go a few places and since I was here…you know the drill.  Kids know exactly when to enter a room, I don’t know what it is in their heads that gives them that sense, but I’m sure I had it at one point too.  I’ll have to ask my parents. 

It’s challenging enough to have a moment alone with your spouse.  I’m not referring to “those moments” but let’s face it, even sharing an embrace is often interrupted by a tug on your pant leg with a request for milk, a toy, mediation, or something along those lines.  So it should come as no surprise that halfway through a resume someone is at my side with a dire need for something.  Or as I’m writing an email to a prospective business, an odorous diaper walks by attached to a small child (and sometimes unattached which makes me move even quicker).

Today I received a note back from an application that stated I had neglected to show examples.  An oversight on my part obviously so I prepared an email reply complete with links to samples and a reference to an attached file.  The email specifically said they were only going to ask one time.  I stepped away to play chef for a moment or two (grilled cheese for the children) and came back, proof read, clicked send and felt I had accomplished something.  Three hours later it hit me, I never attached the file. 

As I sat at the table with this realization, head in my hands in frustration, my daughter asked what was wrong.  I explained I was sending out information to find a new job and forgot to attach a file which was probably going to be a problem.  She answered my distraught with the following statement.  “Daddy, you already have a job.  Your most important job is to take care of your children.” 

My head is still nodding.