On The Job
Coming to the end of her career as a student, my wife is going through a signifcant change in her life:
Having to sit in one place all day for work.
Since the inception of our relationship, my wife has never had just one job. She’s always been at this place for a couple of hours, there for a couple of hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and over here every other weekend. And in between all of that, she was going to class.
But then she found out about this little thing called internship, which for doctoral students is like a job where you get paid minimally and work to the max. That, she was ready for. What she wasn’t ready for was the fatigue involved in being stationary.
For someone who’s moved around constantly throughout her adult life, sitting down is quite the arduous task. Having to be singularly focused after years of frequent engagement in a variety of tasks can be frustrating, to say the least.
Not unlike how being a new spouse can be.
For all your life, you’ve looked out for number one. No one else but you. Sure, you had some moments and flashes of responsibility for someone else. Helping a friend out or supporting a family member, but nothing like being fully responsible for the total emotional, financial, sexual and physical well-being of another person.
If that ain’t daunting, I don’t know what is.
You have to keep reinventing yourself, every single day to make it work and worthwhile for your partner. I’ve said that before, but mostly on the positive side. Now for the negative. Some times you have to be lazy and lethargic to let the other person know that you aren’t a sham. You can’t be perfect all the time, or else the luster and excitement of romanticism and thought loses its novelty.
You have to be able to play both sides of marriage coin. Wonderful and worthless, all at the same time.
So that brings us back to my baby, who is struggling to get acclimated to the 9 to 5. She’ll get there, and she might learn to enjoy it, but for now, it’s worthless to her sense of being a constant go-getter.
Which is a perfect indication of what her life will be once her she gets going out of school.
