Careers and Marriage

"So, guys, if you're game for an exciting life, go ahead and marry a professional gal."

My co-worker steered me to the article above about about careers and marriage. she struggles. she struggles with loving this work, but barely making enough money to support herself and barely having time for a personal life.

In some ways, I suppose the struggle with that too. Scratch that. I don't struggle with it. I've come to terms with it. I admit, I enjoy working a lot, being tired, getting frustrated, being angry, getting really excited, etc.

But then again, I'm young. Let's see how many years of these 12 hour work days and weekends in the office I could handle.

However, sidebar: I think the quote above could be changed in a variety of different ways:

Careers v. Marriage: for the unbalanced types

Careers v. Relationships: for the non-marrying types

Community v. Relationships: for the progressive social activists types

I think the Careers and Marriage thing already lays the foundation that it could exist together. Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I feel like the real question is, Careers versus Marriage?

Also, for the domestic partner types like myself, I'm not sure how I feel about the marriage part. I think trying to have a relationship (much less marriage) along side a demanding, fast paced, and jet setting "career" is already something of an art I have yet to master (please see Monica's dating history).

And also, for the non-career driven but community driven types, I'm not sure how I feel about the career part. I think it's easy to have a job, especially those 9-5 types where you don't have to take anything home, where deadlines and actions translate into real people, where deadlines and actions translate into real people like you, your family, your friends . . people you love and love you.

A good friend of mine just wrote a blog about love vs. independence. Does career v relationships also mean independence v love? Maybe if you consider your career part of independence.

I guess independence encompasses many other aspects, but careers, job, community -- whatever you want to call it -- has always been a big part of it for me and I definitely don't see that changing anytime soon.

Maybe I've been approaching this all wrong. Maybe the game plan should be to look for someone else who is also a community v. relationships type of person so we can both deprioritize one another be really busy but still have a great time when we are together.