Back to the grind

Just like that November is over and I’m officially “going back” to work tomorrow. I feel incredibly fortunate to work for a company that is supportive and encouraged me to take things easy. My team members were able to cover a lot of my work the last few weeks allowing me to spend more time with Colin and Sophia.

While I’m going back to a more full schedule tomorrow, I do feel like I never truly logged off. For better or worse, I worked a bit nearly every day from the day Sophia went into labor on the 5th all the way to today.

There are times where I do wish I could fully log off and just disappear for weeks/months at a time. That’s a big benefit to working at a large company. I have friends in big tech that can take full 4 months of paternity leave and never work a day. That does sound nice at times.

However, that’s just not possible at many small companies where you have a critical role in the day-to-day functions. That’s the case at Secfi. While my team allowed me to only work an hour a day at times, there were just some things that I couldn’t pass off.

All that said, there are great benefits as well as flexibility goes both ways. As the business slows down after Christmas and in January, I hope to take some more easy days to bond with Colin. I’m more than okay with this tradeoff and it fits me and my personality much better. I’m not even sure I can stay away from working for 4 months anyhow.

Looking at my schedule ahead, I’ve got 3 full weeks of work until the holidays really kick off. It’s going to be a bit of a challenge trying to adjust to the new normal with the child. I can’t do my normal in the office at 8am 4 days a week schedule anymore as I have to help Sophia with Colin and ensure she’s getting enough rest.

I’m fortunate to be able to work from home so I’ll likely look to spend 3 days at home and 2 days in the office in December just to start out. We’ll see how that goes for now and I’ll look to make adjustments as they come.