Work-life balance of a dad in mid 40's

I made a big career move back in 2017/07 when I lived in Sacramento, CA to switch from a non-profit company I co-funded in Tokyo to a for-profit, new-born startup in Texas.  This startup company has been successful and just turned their 5-year mark. As the OG /  (non-management) employee no.1, I'm grateful all these experience I've had with them. With the some recent life challenges though, I had to make a tough decision.

From a leader role to the bottom

Company celebrates 5-yr BD (facebook.com)
featuring me and 2 other earliest employees.

As the one of only a few senior level engineers in the beginning, I've taken leading role for the 1st few years of this company. In 2018 we had the 2nd son born, but I somehow managed to work long hours, along with my wife's even longer hours (or I may have not as successful as I think from now? I'm seeing posts like this where family got sick, I got exhausted and almost inmobilized). Then a business boost began probably at the 3rd year, team began expanding, adding a few dozens of employees every year. Management structure was introduced. I remained as a lead, a non-manager position, a new middle manager came in who I honestly didn't get along with and I felt under utilized. Then, layers of life events in 2021 happened: pandemic, relocation, 3rd child birth. I couldn't deal with all these. That's when my wife m started a job (fellowship, one-year long advanced training in surgery) where she came home every single night, stayed with us the entire weekends unlike the residency, so I must have a lot more support from her than the previous years so I should've actually been able to work more than before, in theory. Reality for me was, no, there were too many household and family chores to handle, most notably kids' never ending sickness cycles. That was when another new manager came in to the team who initially suggested  becoming a part-time as an option.

Moment of dilemma

Took me awhile to embrace the idea. I felt becoming a part-time means slow-down my career. I was the one who (gm130s.blogspot.com) quit a job in Japan, decided to come to the US, a country where I didn't have anyone I knew at the age of 33. I'm a type of person who don't mind jumping into work after waking up, don't mind getting back to work long hours after dinner. Indeed I was already slowed down significantly then, but I was hoping to restart building career base again. I was also afraid I was losing the "prime time" in one's career, as some people say 40s is where one has the best combination of energy and authority to be the most productive. I do feel I have enough energy but becoming part-time means I'd lose authority/responsible position. I wasn't (and still isn't) sure how easy to regain a status after a hiatus.

On the other side, I wasn't indeed productive at all. Sometimes I hate to get on a team's meeting because I know I didn't make progress I was supposed to. I also hate to tell the team the days I had to take off because someone was sick and I had to watch. I was scare of routine 1 on 1 meetings with the manager, where I can't remember when was the last 1-on-1 we had a conversation over something positive, productive. I'm sure I was a headache for management.

While I had all these negatives in mind, one positive was then-manager herself, who now works as a leader not just in our company but also in the industry. While I felt she was pressing me to accept part-time, which I didn't like but I understood, she shared her own experience of taking a part-time role for a few years when she had the second baby born. In brief conversations in 1-on-1 meetings, she told me how she enjoyed spending more time with her children than she could had she worked full-time back then.

A thought of "spending more time with kids while they are little" didn't kick in first. A baby is like, doesn't speak yet, doesn't even demonstrate her personality well to me. 3-yr old was indeed showing his lovely character and differences from his older brother. With that said, I wasn't sure how big of a deal that was...compared to rebuilding my career.

Then came a pivot in November 2021. I didn't think I could commit full-time level amount of hours despite I hated to admit. It was simply the situation that drove me to make that decision by myself.

Take it slow

It's been 7 months since I made the change. It's not the best as a career-driven person, but I like it so far. I no longer earn fixed amount of salary, I'm paid per hour I report. For now the upper limit of my work hours is 20 hours a week. If I don't report hours, I won't get paid. That's a reasonable cause and consequence. I lost lots of benefits including health insurance (now covered under my wife's), retirement plans. My responsibility at work is very limited, which was frustrating as there was years where I felt I was doing very important jobs for the entire organization. But with my unavailability, I'm now so grateful that I don't block anyone in the team even when I can't work.

It took me awhile to embrace the idea of slowing my career. But I realized I have no other choice. My guesstimate for these 7 months is that I haven't even fulfilled half of my part-time-ship duty, meaning I've worked 10 hours a week on average (that sounds too low honestly...I've done a little more than that), due to series of sickness, and some family issues that I had to deal with...Covid, non-covid sickness, and else...In all seriousness, I couldn't really think about work for months (immediate tasks, mid-term motivations. These are things I've always enjoyed thinking of) as I had to handle immediate issues with family.

Can't wait to see these 3 play together, even harder.

So, now I'm determined. I'm proud to be a dad, part-time employee. Then, I realized kids look differently to me, things that they do, the way they are. When I see the baby cries for adults, I feel my love for them. When 3-yr old AK repeatedly calls for me every other minute, I feel warm feeling gobbling up from my chest (not something gross). Unless I'm fantasizing, I don't think I feel the same 3 years ago when I was watching the first 2 boys.

If kids grow out of sickness period, then I will probably seek becoming full-time again soon. I just don't know how long it takes. Unless the employer fires me, I might remain part-time for awhile.