Perspective

While the freelance work I was doing was getting more infrequent, I started to think about what my other options might be. Now I've written a number of stories on women returning to work, I guess because I've known that some day--and it's getting closer by the day--I would return to work full time. Now, with my daughter a junior in college and my son a junior in high school, I know that I want to rejoin the working world sometime within the year.

But here's the thing--I really am not sure what I wanted to do next. I've practiced law as a litigator and have worked on staff as an editor at the National Law Journal, a legal newspaper, and then freelance as a reporter once the babysitter quit. But now, with newspapers and magazines making major cuts and blogging making work a round-the-clock job, I wasn't sure what was next.

I know that this is what my husband Michael calls a high-class problem. Because I'm fortunate enough to be able to afford to work freelance and spend lots of, um, quality time home with my teenagers. (I think my daughter liked having me around; my son has his doubts).

So, it's the age-old (i know, it's a bad pun) quandary: what should I be when I grow up?

The age thing

This all started as a lark. I was working as a freelance reporter, fairly consistently for the New York Times, first for the Westchester section and then for the business section.
But one by one the editors with whom I worked left or were reassigned.
And then the credit crisis hit, and with my husband practicing law at one of the big (hopefully too-big-to-fail) banks, I found that I was conflicted out of writing on many topics.

And so I started to think about what else I could do with my life.