The Gilded Margin

By Shyanne Gines

Wednesday, I spent about 30 minutes deciding whether I should go to a networking event after the conference or go home.

It really should not have required 30 minutes.

The conference ended around 5:30 and the event didn’t start until 7. Home was about 50 minutes away, so there wasn’t really enough time to go home, spend any meaningful time there and then turn around and come back.

I was hungry. I was tired. I didn’t have a change of clothes with me.

Granted I could have packed clothes and additional snacks. I understand that.

But I wanted to go home.

That should have been enough, but apparently my brain had other plans.

Because I also wanted to stay.

I care about my career. I like these conferences. I like learning things that I can actually bring back and use. I like meeting people who have been doing this longer than I have and people who work in areas I’m trying to learn more about.

I’m currently a Property & Evidence Technician and the Crime Victim Liaison for my department. I have my master’s in Victim Services Management. I’m training to become a third responder, and this month I’m starting my second semester of my Doctor of Forensic Science program.

I’m not accidentally finding myself in these spaces.

I’m actively trying to get further into them.

So, of course, part of me was saying, Stay.

Networking is important. I know that.

There were going to be people there I knew and probably plenty I didn’t. Maybe I would meet someone I could learn from. Maybe a conversation would turn into a training opportunity later. Maybe I would make a connection that wouldn’t mean anything Wednesday night but would matter six months from now.

You just don’t know.

And then I thought about my kids.

I’d already been gone all day.

They were 50 minutes away, and I wanted to go home to them.

Nothing was wrong. Nobody was calling me saying they needed me. There wasn’t some emergency waiting at home.

I’m their mom, and I wanted to go home.

Apparently that wasn’t allowed to be a simple thought either.

Because then I started wondering if I was choosing being a mom over being serious about my career.

And I hate even writing that because I don’t actually believe those things are mutually exclusive.

But sometimes the fear is there anyway.

I work in a law-enforcement environment, but I’m not sworn.

There is a difference.

Pretending there isn’t would be silly.

There are sworn employees and civilian employees, and whether anyone says it out loud or not, sometimes you become very aware of which side of that line you’re standing on.

Then add being a woman.

Then add being a mom.

And suddenly something as simple as being tired and wanting to go home can turn into this stupid little voice asking:

How does this look?

Are the sworn people staying?

Am I leaving while everyone else is networking?

Does leaving make it look like I’m not as invested?

Is somebody going to think, Of course she went home to her kids?

Would a man be sitting here feeling guilty about this?

Would a man with kids feel like he needed to explain why he wanted to go home?

I don’t know.

And I want to be fair about that.

Nobody at the conference said any of those things to me.

Nobody told me I needed to stay.

Nobody questioned my commitment.

A lot of that pressure was coming from inside my own head.

But that doesn’t mean the fear isn’t real.

There are stereotypes in this field.

There are stereotypes about civilian staff.

There are stereotypes about women.

There are stereotypes about mothers.

And when you’re trying to grow professionally, sometimes you become hyperaware of not wanting to accidentally confirm one of them.

I don’t want anyone thinking I can’t handle difficult material because I’m a woman.

I don’t want someone assuming I’m less committed because I’m a mother.

I don’t want being civilian staff to somehow translate into being less serious about the work.

And I definitely don’t want to feel like I have to prove otherwise by saying yes to absolutely everything.

Because the truth is, I can handle the work.

I’m quite literally building my education and training around doing more of it.

Wednesday wasn’t about not being able to handle what I’d spent the day learning.

I was just tired.

There’s a difference.

And because apparently professional guilt and mom guilt weren’t enough for one parking-lot conversation with myself, I also started thinking about social media.

I’m trying to get my social media and blog off the ground.

I could see the content opportunities immediately.

I could get some clips of the event. Maybe do something about conference networking. Take pictures. Get some behind-the-scenes footage. Maybe meet somebody interesting. Maybe hear something that sparked another post.

I could probably get several pieces of content out of the night.

And I want this thing I’m building online to grow.

Not just because I want followers.

I started writing because I want to help people.

I want to talk about things people don’t always know how to talk about. I want somebody to read something I wrote and think, Oh good, somebody else gets it.

I want connection.

I want community.

I want people to learn things here, but I also want them to feel like they’re talking to an actual person who doesn’t have everything figured out either.

And yes, I’m hopeful that someday it makes money.

I don’t think those things have to be mutually exclusive either.

I can genuinely want to help people and build a community and also hope that something I’m putting this much time into eventually creates some financial gain for my family.

I’d love for it to pay a bill someday.

Or groceries.

Or an experience with my kids.

Or just give us a little more room to breathe.

I don’t know what it will become.

I’m just hopeful enough to keep trying.

Which meant I found a way to feel guilty about that too.

Because now I wasn’t only leaving a networking opportunity.

I was potentially leaving a content opportunity.

And then my brain went one step further:

What if you’re being selfish by going home?

I know.

I was feeling selfish about going home to my own children.

Make that make sense.

But in my head it did.

Because what if staying helped my career?

What if I got content that actually reached people?

What if I made a connection?

What if this thing I’m building eventually helps financially support my family?

What if I’m saying I want all of these things and then walking away from opportunities because I’m tired?

And somewhere underneath professional me, mom me, content-creator me and apparently the imaginary panel of people judging my commitment to my career was just… me.

Hungry.

Tired.

Still in the same clothes I’d been wearing all day.

With an hour and a half to kill before the event even started.

Wanting to go home. Take a shower. Eat some food. Melt into the couch.

Could I have stayed?

Absolutely.

I could have found food. I could have waited around. I could have gone to the event and talked to people. I could have gotten content. I could have driven home afterward.

I would have been fine.

That’s important to me.

Because I don’t want to tell this story like I had reached some breaking point.

I hadn’t.

I wasn’t drowning.

The material wasn’t too much.

I didn’t need to escape.

I was tired on a Wednesday after a full conference day.

That’s it.

But I think there’s something worth talking about in that too.

We talk about compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress in fields that regularly deal with other people’s trauma. I’m not a mental-health professional, and I’m not diagnosing myself with either.

I just think they’re things we should be aware of.

You can be perfectly capable of doing your job and still understand that the work has weight.

You can listen to difficult material all day and be okay, but still want your brain to think about something completely normal afterward.

You can care deeply without carrying everything home.

Sometimes I want music on the drive.

Sometimes I want silence.

Sometimes I want to come home, change clothes, feed animals, deal with kids and worry about whatever completely ordinary problem is happening in my house that night.

Sometimes this job does become overstimulating no matter the badge, or the gender, and providing yourself a space to digest that is necessary.

Honestly, ordinary problems can be kind of refreshing.

I’m realizing I need the same boundaries with content.

Once you start intentionally creating, everything starts looking like something you could post.

Conference? Content.

Networking event? Content.

Animal doing something ridiculous? Definitely content.

Random thought in the car? Better put it in my notes before I forget it.

I actually love that.

Creating has made me pay attention to my life differently.

But I don’t want to get to the point where every experience has to produce something.

Sometimes I need to live my life instead of figuring out how to package it.

And the funny part is that I was worried about missing the content opportunity at the event, and instead I came home with this.

Maybe this was the story I was supposed to tell.

Or maybe there isn’t a “supposed to.”

Maybe I just went home Wednesday and then realized I had something to say about it.

I did go home, by the way.

After 30 minutes of making a simple decision ridiculously complicated, I got in my car and went home.

And nothing terrible happened.

My career did not collapse.

My social media did not disappear.

I didn’t suddenly become less ambitious.

I didn’t become less capable.

I didn’t prove that civilian employees aren’t committed enough.

I didn’t prove some stereotype about women or working mothers.

I missed a networking event.

That’s all.

Would something good have happened if I stayed?

Maybe.

I genuinely don’t know.

Maybe I would’ve made a great connection. Maybe I would’ve gotten great content. Maybe I would’ve had a great time.

That’s the uncomfortable thing about saying no to an opportunity.

You don’t get to know what would’ve happened if you’d said yes.

But I went home.

I ate.

I changed clothes.

I got to be Mom instead of Property & Evidence Tech, Crime Victim Liaison, doctoral student, future third responder, blogger, content creator or woman trying to prove she belongs in the room.

Just Mom.

Just me.

And the next morning, all of those other parts of me were still there.

I’m still serious about my career.

I’m still going into my second semester of my doctorate.

I’m still training.

I’m still going to conferences.

I’m still going to network.

I’m still going to create content.

I’m still hopeful that this little community I’m trying to build becomes something meaningful and, eventually, something that helps my family financially too.

Going home one Wednesday didn’t take any of that away.

Maybe that’s what I’m actually learning.

I don’t have to prove that I can handle everything by doing everything.

Sometimes I can know I am completely capable of staying…

and still decide I’d rather go home.

-The Gilded Margin