Looking ahead to 2011: Aspirations and Plans For New Possibilities In My Life #OWNtalk

This blog post is sponsored by TwitterMoms and OWN, Oprah Winfrey Network

Looking ahead to 2011, I see a lot of changes.  For the past six years, I've been a stay-at-home mom.  I am thankful for the opportunity to stay home with my daughter until she went to kindergarten and to be a full-time mom to my son.  With our daughter, I needed to work so I always was torn between work and raising her while my husband completed his degree.  When our son came along, my husband had literally just finished his degree (with 10 days to spare) and we already had plans to move from Pennsylvania to Virginia where he took a job that allowed me to stay home with the kids full-time.

Now, my baby will turn 6 this month and is well acclimated to school.  The time has come for me to move onto the next chapter of my life, which is re-entering the work force.  I had previously worked as a legal assistant, so I'm hoping to parlay those skills into something similar.  I must confess, I'm very nervous about the idea of going back to work full-time.  I'm a little out of the loop, though I've kept up with technology.  I worry that my 6 year hiatus (except for a short stint as a card merchandiser) will be held against me when I apply for jobs. 

One main motivation that we have to move is the school system.  Our schools rank quite low, though they are trying to improve them.  When your high school is scraping the barrel as being in the bottom 5% of your state and your elementary school isn't ranked much higher, you have to worry about the quality of the education your children are receiving.  Returning to work would mean we would be in a better position to move out of this school district into a better one.  Like many in the region, our home value decreased leaving us with breaking even at best or underwater by 10s of thousands of dollars at worst.  We believe that the best way to move is for me to get a job and save, save, save in case we need to bring money to the table when we finally do sell.

So, to ring in the new year, I've bought a program to help me update my resume over the holidays and I'll be hitting those after-Christmas sales for business attire.  I'll still be blogging, but perhaps a bit less often than I normally do.  So wish me luck that in 2011, I'll land a job that will help me reach the goal that I want most:  to move.  If you have any good advice for job interviews after spending years as a stay-at-home-mom, please leave them in the comments section. 

I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms and OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network blogging program, for a $50 gift card. For more information on how you can participate, click here.