I'm struggling right now.
I'm a teacher, and at the beginning of the summer, I had my first baby. I went into my pregnancy feeling like the timing was perfect because I'd have the entire summer to spend with my little man before returning to work in the fall. Some rather scary things happened at work near the end of the last school year that made me worry about my personal safety, and that paired with my feelings about leaving my son in the care of strangers and knowing the kind of workload I'd have once the school year started pushed me to take a year off from teaching. Many people talk about teachers getting the summers off (which is only partly true), but what they don't see is how most teachers literally work from the moment they wake up until the moment they go to bed during the school year. I really want to be able to give more attention than that to my son.
The problem is that I need to be pulling in some income; my husband works for a non-profit and doesn't make enough for us to live on his income alone. After nearly a decade of focusing on teaching, I have no idea where to start trying to find something else. I feel completely lost, inadequate, and almost hopeless when it comes to finding something that will allow me to work from home and bring in enough to supplement my husband's income. I've thought about selling things on Etsy (I'm quite crafty), but I'm worried that won't bring in enough money, and despite my English teaching background, I don't have the credentials to do freelance proofreading and editing.
Has anyone else gone through something similar? How did you cope?
I'm a teacher, and at the beginning of the summer, I had my first baby. I went into my pregnancy feeling like the timing was perfect because I'd have the entire summer to spend with my little man before returning to work in the fall. Some rather scary things happened at work near the end of the last school year that made me worry about my personal safety, and that paired with my feelings about leaving my son in the care of strangers and knowing the kind of workload I'd have once the school year started pushed me to take a year off from teaching. Many people talk about teachers getting the summers off (which is only partly true), but what they don't see is how most teachers literally work from the moment they wake up until the moment they go to bed during the school year. I really want to be able to give more attention than that to my son.
The problem is that I need to be pulling in some income; my husband works for a non-profit and doesn't make enough for us to live on his income alone. After nearly a decade of focusing on teaching, I have no idea where to start trying to find something else. I feel completely lost, inadequate, and almost hopeless when it comes to finding something that will allow me to work from home and bring in enough to supplement my husband's income. I've thought about selling things on Etsy (I'm quite crafty), but I'm worried that won't bring in enough money, and despite my English teaching background, I don't have the credentials to do freelance proofreading and editing.
Has anyone else gone through something similar? How did you cope?