Survivor Guilt

My dad started a second job yesterday.

He was laid off some time ago - in the big auto-worker cuts. He's a skilled tradesman and has a good contract. Part of his contract says that if the company lays him off for more than a year, he goes back to work but not HIS work. So for the past almost 9 months he's been working at a plethora of different jobs; some of them cool (like re-building a barn for a local petting farm after a horrible fire), some of them not so cool (like sweeping the parking lot).

Thing is, while it's cool that he's working, he's only been working 40 hours a week... compared to the 60+ that he used to work.

A big cramp on the paternal finances.

Fortunately my mom is something of a financial genius, and they've been able to survive almost two years of my dad not "working".

Lately, though, things are getting scary for them. So my dad took on a second job. A production job. The kind of job he hasn't had in over 20 years. As a second job.

He's exhausted. Day one beat him up pretty bad. And yeah, I could think to myself, well - it's just because it's just day one, it will get better after a week or two.

But I'm not thinking that... I'm thinking "I could get another job and help them out." I'm thinking, "I could rework my budget again, and find a way to pay my mom for looking after the baby while I'm at work."

No - I haven't been through some traumatic experience like a hurricane or a tsunami or a war... but I DO feel the guilt of one who sits at home, after a day's work, in the loving company of family.