Hard

I feel like I should write something, because there hasn't been any real content from me in a while, but my head is something of a disorganized, depressing mess.  JP is interviewing for jobs in various fields and cities and states and it is a difficult process.  It's hard on him  because of the rejections and the mounting frustration of not having a "real" (his word, not mine) job ten months out of business school.  He worked like crazy to start a successful company that now looks like more of a failure on his resume because of its short life thanks to a crazy business partner.  It's a tight job market pretty much everywhere, but especially in Austin because of its size and general desirability; plus, it's a very tech focused city and his BBA in Finance combined with an MBA doesn't get him nearly as far as a BS in any type engineering would.  He loves his coaching, but he wants to contribute more and he wants to be able to grow and succeed in a corporate career.  It's hard on me because I feel like I'm constantly balancing the need to support him, with the occasional need to verbally smack him (e.g. don't you dare tell me you're going to practice today when you told me you couldn't pick up the kids early because you had so much interview prep work to do), with my even more rare desire to scream "where the f was all this drive to get a business job when you were in BUSINESS SCHOOL and had access to all their resources we now have to pay for?!".  Because, even though I gave him my blessing at the time, a tiny part of me is furious with him for taking a risky start-up position when he could have been looking for more solid jobs that actually paid something, and every now and then that part has to come out too.  And then there's an overall ambivalence about him working at all -- part of me desperately want him to find a job to relieve some of the pressure on me, so we can take a deep financial breath, so I won't stop staring at our massive educational loan balances, so I can actually listen to opportunities that pay less than my current salary (as every single non-BigLaw opportunity does).  And yet the other part of me knows that our life is going to get so much harder with two full-time working parents and wonders why JP can't just want to be a stay-at-home dad so we could save $2,000/month on daycare, and I could continue to have a spouse who does nearly all the cooking, all the errands, and all the household chores.  Because, even though I don't want that role either, having only one person working full-time has been pretty awesome. And so I cheer the successes, mourn the failures, and secretly wonder what I really want the outcome of each new opportunity to be.  On JP's end the job searching is hard, the rejections are hard, and my most frequent urge is to just hug him and remind him that he's amazing and will be an asset to the company that's lucky enough to have him.  I'm his only family, his only support.  His parents are painful non-entities, an absence made worse by the fact that they're still around, they've just chosen a misplaced sense of pride and injury over any involvement with their son and his children.  He has no siblings, no aunts or uncles, one living grandparent who is even crazier and meaner than his mother, and his closest friend in Austin is now an ex-business partner who he is mostly definitely not speaking to.  I'm kind of it.  So, it's hard. 

Combined with all that, my current level of job satisfaction is less than it was.  A lot less.  I hate that I'm being turned in to an IP litigator, but in Austin, that's our bread and butter, and there's not enough overflow from the securities and big corporate litigation sections in the other cities to keep us busy right now.  I don't dislike my work, but I don't enjoy it either, and that's a loss.  And then, my very favorite senior associate who has become a very close friend announced she is most likely leaving due to a new opportunity for her husband in another state and I almost started to cry.  The people you work with have such an effect on your (or at least my) job satisfaction, and I can't imagine working without either the people or the subject matter that I like.  Then yesterday I had to fire one of the contract attorneys working under me in this case.  It sucked, as did the frantic phone call and email I received from him immediately after cutting him.  It was a black and white decision for reasons I won't go in to, but I didn't like it. 

Last night I was playing with the kids in the play room after dinner and I just felt sad.  I can't believe Claire is almost 10 months old.  I adore her little baby self so much I almost started crying about that she's getting older so quickly.  I never understood the moms who said that before, I cheered on every single day older that Landon got until he hit about 12-18 months, but with Claire I get it.  Even in her baby state, she's really not any harder than 3.5 year old Landon, and she's so adorable, with the clapping and crawling and excitement.  I have a rather desperate feeling that it hasn't been enough, that it's going by too quickly and I'm missing such big parts of it.  I spent all day Sunday with the kids while JP coached; we went to the grocery store and then I cooked for 4 hours.  It was the best day I've spent in a while - both kids were so good and cute and I was so very happy.  I wasn't sad to go to work on Monday, but it was the first day I felt regret as I pulled out of the daycare parking lot.  I frequently wish I could be in two places at once, or that the weekends were longer, but true regret or sadness at going to work is a new one.

There's happiness, so much of it.  Usually it floats on the surface and I don't even need to try to feel it above anything else, and I know people have it harder and I have little reason to feel this down.  But today, this week, perspective and happiness have been slippery and elusive and I'm having a very hard holding on to either of them for very long.