Becca’s Cyber Home

It’s been one of those weeks that had me asking my husband if he was sure I couldn’t just quit my job effective immediately. He said I could if I don’t mind living in a cardboard box. Today, I think I could settle for that cardboard box.

What keeps IT marketing professionals from going postal? Sights like this. My pets, my fur babies, are wonderful blood pressure-lowering influences. When they’re not shredding paper and eating poop, anyway. But seriously, just now I looked down and there was Tex, looking up at me with his happy-smiley big brown eyes.

Posting his picture made me think of some of the things that are sunshine on these gloomy, difficult days. I’m thinking how blessed I am, to have my family and friends, a beautiful house. Sure puts my sh*thole career in perspective.

I’ve been liking my job more lately–been able to work on things I can be passionate about. There are just a lot of unrealistic expectations right now from management, and I don’t deal well with disappointing my superiors. It makes me feel like I have failed, though I know logically in this case, it’s not my failings that are making the problems.

And Spring has sprung here in southeastern Texas. I’ve been driving around, a little jealous of everyone else’s blooming trees. But our pear tree finally opened a few buds, our maple is slowly leafing, our crepe myrtles are showing leaves, and our Indian Hawthorne has some open bud. Our viburnum bushes out back still haven’t bloomed, but expect they will in a few weeks. What really caught my eye was this lonely little daffodil who poked out of our Hawthornes a week or so ago. I planted bulbs in our front flower bed the year we moved in, but the soil had so much clay they were all duds. So I pulled them up and planted hardier perennials. Lo and behold, 4 years later, this little guy shows up!

Surfing news on the web this morning, I stumbled upon a story that left me with one simple reaction: Um, duh?

Yahoo! News: Men who do housework may get more sex

And that took me to a place I didn’t expect as I sat down to write this post. I grew up in the generation that was told immediately and constantly “you can do whatever you want.” You’re just as good as the men, we’re told. It took me 20 years to realize that “whatever you want” wasn’t true.

For better or worse, I grew up instinctively expecting that I should do whatever I could to climb the corporate and social ladder, to prove that I could do anything a man could. In our generation, success equals stature, money, and social standing. Somehow it became ingrained in me that career achievement was what women were supposed to do. What a switch from just 30 years ago, when women were still expected to retain their roles as primary caregivers to their families.

When I was in college and people asked me what I wanted to do, I’d come up with some perfunctory response about graduating, getting a good job, starting my career, and managing an information delivery team for NASA. That’s what I trained myself to say, because when I said what I truly wanted, my questioner’s response ranged from baffled to derisive.

“I want to be a housewife. I want to tend my home and garden, read lots of books, and learn whatever I can about the universe and all who occupy it. I want to be fulfilled, on my terms, not yours.” In the age of women’s equality and feminism, that was frowned upon. It was a joke, and no one wants to be the butt of a joke.

I’m a professional with a decent middle-class salary (still earning less than my male counterparts, I’m sure). Did I want that MBA I worked my tail off for? Not really, but it was the logical next step in my cookie-cutter professional life. So here I am, a woman in her 30’s who feels like she’s trapped in a career lifestyle that’s always taking her one step further away from where she truly wants to be. Because “whatever I want to do” turned out to be a false promise, and I’m just now trying to figure out what I want that promise to mean.