Hi Guys- I have been away from the message board for a long time so I'm not sure what the tone is anymore but seeing as there isn't any other place I can think of to express how I am feeling I thought I'd spill it here.

Times are hard and here in NYC there are two groups, the over worked and the unemployed. My wife belongs in the over worked category. Which means when she gets home our daughter is in bed and I’ve about had it for the day. It isn’t that I don’t want to talk or be with her but our daughter is at the – very loud, “why?” - I need MORE attention – phase in her life and its stressing me out. I can handle it, this is what I agreed to do when we knew our daughter was on the way, but…as I sit listening to my wife talk about her day and how this and that happened all I can think of is, “well my day was the same as it was yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that…”

Recently one of the up and coming new technologies asked my wife to join their group which is a feather in her cap. She was also considered to be the first head of content strategy for MRM Worldwide, so she is in demand and moving up. Me? Well I put all my ambitions on hold for my family. It isn’t that being at home isn’t rewarding or that I don’t enjoy parts of it but right now in my life I’m a well being sucked dry. Everyone needs me. I’m having a hard time with it. I don’t want the cat to sit on me, I don’t want to be touched or asked for things. That, however, is not possible. So I would like a promotion what ever that would mean for an at Home Dad.

If I had to define it it would be that my wife didn’t ask for a gold star for doing the things that she sometimes cries to me that “she never gets to do.” It would mean that I get to be angry with my daughter and rather than be in appropriate with her have my wife listen to my feelings and not invalidate them with things I know, like that my daughter is 4 for instance.

Not to imply that my wife and I don’t talk we are more open than many couples we know its just that she insists I can tell her when I have had a bad day but when I do I feel her eyes burning a hole in me as I talk . (Her father ditched her and her mother when my wife was about 5 so she still has that lingering “men leave” crap hanging around.) So I keep things to myself. That doesn’t help either nor, should I say, does correcting my wife. I work hard to keep a schedule and to keep my gal on track for doing things that she is capable of doing at 4. My wife swoops in and plays super-mom and despite my asking, not telling, her not to do things she does them. Oh, then asks for more gold stars for doing what I asked her not to do. In fairness she works long hours and wants to spoil our daughter a little when she sees her.

The flip side to that is when my wife complains, “I never have 5 seconds to myself.” Really? Your friend took you on a spa day which ended up with my wife staying in Manhattan for two nights and when she came home she was sick so I did an unending stint with my daughter that my wife doesn’t understand why I was a little on edge when she got home. What am I going to say to someone who works so hard? “No honey I’d like it if you came home rather than realx with your oldest friend.” That’s going to go far. I don’t get 5 seconds without another grocery list, without my friends backing out of plans to get together; I don’t get 5 seconds without my daughter, without more fucking laundry, without doctor appointments, or play dates.

So it irks me. I have three hours to spare a day during the week while my daughter is in pre-school. I spend it in Midwood Brooklyn (Midwood is just like a suburb big houses and laws and not much to do) so I got a pass to go to the Brooklyn Collage Library. That has been nice but my writing has stopped and I have been filled with feelings of dread over what happens next. I studied and worked for years to do something now I can’t even see strait let alone write or get things together to make a short film.

If being at home has taught me anything it’s that things change and I know those who are fortunate enough to have what my wife and I have shouldn’t throw stones. But…I listen to her all the time and just because our daughter is involved I feel she should be as impartial as possible and listen to me.

~ Thanks, Jon