Career Choice, Support Group, and Flower Power (LOH Contest Entry)

Heya Ladies! How's everybody doing at this time of the week? A few more days and it's weekend again. Not that there's a lot of difference between weekends and weekdays nowadays, but I'm feeling the need to make an opening for my post so there.

I love the questions for this week's contest. I usually just choose one and then elaborate my answer but for Ladies of Hive Community Contest #8 I might answer all three questions. I'm just thinking (more like typing) outloud right now so I'm not sure where my thoughts would lead me. I may or may not be able to amswer all questions but I'll still try. Before I push through with answering the questions, I'd like to invite @discoveringarni and @millycf1976 to join in on the fun too.

Let me start with question #1.

If you started all over again, what kind of career would you like or want?

Mid-year 2018, I was officially a stay-at-home mom. My kid was almost two years old back then. The decision of leaving my corporate job versus staying at home full time to take care of my family was really an immensely difficult call for me. I used to be a Workforce Analyst in a contact center company. I have moved from one company to another (stayed for more than 4 years at most), and have switched roles from Real Time Analyst to Scheduling and partly some Forecasting duties as well. All still within the umbrella of the Workforce Management. I have been offered several other designations but I have already fallen in love with the kind of work we do in WFM. All those real-time big decisions that would make or break the day's performance, the power we hold over choosing to approve/decline certain scheduling requests, the burden we carry when all the managers are looking at us to make sure the operations run smoothly day in and day out. I used to eat stress for breakfast, dinner and lunch. During this pandemic, I feel for the people in WFM because they have one of the biggest roles in providing the numbers that the higher ups will use for their decision making. And I know there have been huge cuts over the past few months, and with the skeletal workforce, plus the storms that happened here in the Philippines, I can only imagine how they juggled all those factors and still come up with the best decisions for the contact center.

More than the responsibilities I hold, I fell in love with the processes. I used to face excel files on my 9-5 and as if that's not enough, when I get home, once I turn on my home computer, my brain will still bring me back to the excel templates I am working on. I used to sleeptalk (my husband tells me the formulas/numbers I mumble during sleep) about excel, I dream about it, I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night because the answer to my excel problem appeared to me in my dream.

To be honest, this was not on my list of dream jobs back when I was a kid. I did not know back then that there are more people involved in a contact center than just the frontliners taking the calls. I used to wish to be a teacher, a doctor, a nurse, a dishwasher (I loved washing dishes because that was the housechore my mom assigned to me), a writer, a seamstress, a marathon runner, a scientist. Thinking about it now, I think my dream jobs were all influenced by the movies I watched when I was a kid. Oh yeah, I used to wish I could be a superhero like Wonderwoman, or maybe Supergirl or maybe Pink Mask (from Masked Man). Well, I was a kid. Aside from the chores and assignments, there's not much to do but to daydream.

Going back to the question, if I could start over again, my career path would be one that leads me to homemaking. I used to laugh at one of my colleagues before when she says her dream job is to be a housewife. I was one of those people that believed being a housewife or a stay at home mom is not a career. Why, I was wrong. Because now, I am not just a housewife, I am a Master of the House.

And if I will start over again, I will still choose to be in this path only this time, all my choices will be targeted at acquiring skills and knowledge required for the job description for the title I hold. Why, being the Master of the House means one should have enough knowledge about healthcare and wellness (doctor, nurse), academics and arts(teacher), housekeeping, physical education, and overall just being a superhero to our little one. I am thankful that I had enough years to count in my WFM gig because I got the training I needed in making quick decisions (especially when my kid got very sick and I was alone with her in the middle of the night) and hustling and juggling several tasks at any given time.

I hope that answers question #1.

Let's move on to question #2.

If you suddenly became a single parent, to whom or where would you go for support?

This question seem to be a little vague to me but just for the sake of answering it, I would assume this is about two kinds of support: financial and emotional.

First, for the financial bit.

It has been a nasty habit of mine to prepare for the worst. On our first years of marriage, I talked to my husband about this. So there are two possible scenarios where I'll be a single mom. One, he dies or two, he cheats or finds another woman - where he will eventually die too because of my wrath (just kidding, I love him dearly.) Scrap that death thing on option two. But anyways, ever since I became a mom, my daughter's welfare has been my priority. I guess that's a given for every mom. And so, I convinced my husband to get us an insurance policy that has investments attached to it. So if I become a single mom because of scenario number 1, that should get us covered for at least a few years until I get myself a new home based job that would help sustain our needs while I still homeschool my kid. If in any case he leaves for another woman, the amswer is simple. He is free to follow his heart but he will still need to fulfill his obligations to his child. I don't particularly know the details pertaining to the legalities of this, but I know that he is required by law to provide support for his daughter. That should cover the financial support this question is looking for.

As for the other form of support, I pretty much have a solid base of support system from my family and my tiny circle of friends. I am a very emotional person and regularly connecting with my peers is crucial for my survival. Whether my husband leaves me for ny reason at all, I know my sister will surely be my go to person. My friends whom I would usually text "Phone a friend" is also my lifeline in times of emotional crisis. It pays to have a sister from another mother in our trying times.

So that's question number two.

What flower would best represent you? And why?

A sunflower! Definitely a sunflower. For one, it is my favorite. For my first tattoo, I chose a sunflower drawn into my skin. The lines hurt a lot during the tattoo session but I would love to have my second tattoo one of these days.

Who wouldn't like a sunflower? Have you ever played Plants Vs. Zombies? Those sunflowers provide the sun during the gameplay which is needed to get more defensive plants. Also, in real life, sunflowers tend to follow the sun as they grow. I haven't successfully grown a sunflower to observe this though.

To me, sunflowers bring smiles (because of the cute picture in the game) and they tend to follow the sun (light) to help them grow. That is very much me. In my years in the platform, my quest for growth as a writer, blogger, and content creator has pushed me to follow (and observe) the lightbringers of this platform. I try to see how they write their contents, how they interact with their followers and try to emulate their example. Plus, it has been my personl goal to always make people smile no matter how awkward I may be sometimes. Life is hard enough as it is, it would be best if we could be the sunshine (or the sunflower rather) to our circles of friends.

Look at that! A lengthy post because I really was inspired by the questions. I was able to asnwer all three afterall! Thank you so much @ladiesofhive for making these contests. More powers to us ladies!

_{All images used are from Canva unless otherwise stated.}

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@romeskie is a full-time stay at home mom juggling homeschooling, crocheting, and homemaking. A Business Administration graduate with a major in Marketing who ended up in the contact center industry, on the frontlines, climbing her way up to Workforce Management where she found her passion in real-time analysis and management. A once self-proclaimed careerwoman who soon realized homemaking was her real calling. Her passion varies from reading, writing, photography, and most of all, crocheting.

Connect with her through her Facebook Page: The Leftie Crocheter and on Instagram. Feel free to subscribe to her Youtube Channel: The Leftie Crocheter

_{Big thanks to @bearone for my Hive PH badge.}