My job search hasn't budged in weeks. It got really exciting there for about 3 weeks, then all went quiet. Leigh is doing her very best to keep my spirits up. Every day I'm resigning myself to more possible truths about my life in 7 weeks, when my clerkship officially ends: 1) I will probably be unemployed, 2) it might be for a while, it might not be for too long, 3) money will be tight, but I'll do my best to keep us afloat, and 4) it's not the end of the world. That last one is the hardest to remind myself of, but it's true, and what's even more true is that I've been really lucky so far when compared to a lot of other professionals my age.
Since I'm semi-obsessed with the Foreign Service, I tend to read a lot of FSO blogs and articles. There's a discussion going on right now about "having it all" and being a woman in a high powered position or government service. The first article was written by a Princeton professor who worked at a high level in the State Department for a while and found it impossible to be a "very important person" and have kids and a husband who works in another city. My reaction was something along the lines of "of course that was hard and of course some aspects of her life started to deteriorate!" But I'm not going to judge the author. It's her life and she should try to achieve as many of her dreams as possible. In that vein, today I read the response article in The Atlantic, which basically said we have to determine what "having it all" means to us and then "own" our choices. There's also a great blog post I read today that points out that all of our choices mean compromising something, but that's OK too.
These ideas get me thinking about a lot of things: my career prospects and dreams, my growing family, and generally what's important to me. I want it all, but my version of "ALL" is unique to me and my family. We want a couple of kids, jobs we enjoy for the most part, and the chance to have a lot of unique experiences together (i.e. travel a lot). For more practical purposes, we want to pay off our debt (mostly student loans), build our savings, and live simply. As you can see, for us having it all is very, very different than being everyone's boss, sending our kids to Harvard, and escaping to a million dollar beach house on weekends.
In a perfect world this would mean I would find a great job in the next six weeks, work hard and become excellent at what I do, then reassess based on the opportunities that come my way. At that point we'd have two kids and Leigh could choose to stay home or continue working. We would have enough money to live comfortably and save for retirement and enough time off from work for family time and travel. It sounds modest, but the truth is that this is a pretty tall order for our generation. We're lucky to have a decent job, let alone build savings or pay off debt. Those of us who are traveling a lot or having other unique experiences are either in school, taking low-paying contract jobs, or living off our parents. Sad, but true.
I just hope that my decision to move my little family to Alaska to start our careers in a not dying economy turns out to be a good choice. To achieve that all I need is an opportunity- a good job that pays well and is permanent. After that, the "having it all" part is up to me and I'm up for the challenge.
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