Work, career, and my very lucky husband

Sometimes, I envy my husband so much that I'm surprised my hair isn't green. Of course, I envy him for the same reason I adore him (or one of those reasons anyway): he knows what he wants to do for a living, and he does it. He does it extremely well, and never runs out of ideas for projects and students. When he isn't working, he reads a lot, and he reads stuff that feeds his brain with new food for his work-thinking. I'm reading Pat Conroy novels, and he's reading Richard Dawkins.

Early in our relationship, it was clear that Greg would need his work, and all other life plans needed to accommodate it. You think I'm kidding. Anyone else have children specifically designed to be born outside the SIGGraph schedule? And that careful timing was decided *after* he did enough thinking to be truly sure he could live a life that included more than just his work and his wife (and he's a brilliant dad, by the way).

After some serious jealousy of his work-love at the beginning, I figured it was easy enough to work around Greg's career plans, because I didn't really have any of my own.

I still don't.

I started working at CDC nearly 18 years ago, so you'd think I would call this a career. But always in the back of my mind is the fact that I backed into this career; to be honest, most people do, as there aren't many known career paths that lead to government work in sexual health. Someday I will write about how I got here, but as I'm preparing to go back after a five-week absence, my real question is why I stay.

Partly it's a golden cage. I've got a great life, colleagues who understand when I drop everything and race across town to get to Cassie during a migraine attack, and a certain level of both respect and accomplishment that have accumulated over the years. And most of the work is interesting, though the assignments vary with new bosses and realignments and various ego wars. But until the kids are out of the house, there's not an easy way to give up all the comfort and familiarity of this long-held job and start on a new life path.

What would I do, anyway? I don't know. I've never known. I have never had Greg's undying love for any one topic, any mental compulsion to dive into a brain zone and stay there for life.  I have never figured out what to do when I grow up. I like a lot of types of work; I'm just not sure I love any of it, at least not the way Greg does.

Are there more people as lucky as Greg? Are there people who manage a grocery store who can't wait to get to work every day? Are bike repair people in love with their jobs? What is it that makes people get up and want to work each day? And conversely, are there more people like me, who really should have been born into royal and wealthy families?

Well, regardless, I will go back to work tomorrow. Because the alternative is depending on someone else for my income, and that will never happen.