39w1d

I am so tired. I woke up last night and couldn't fall back asleep and now I just feel completely wiped out. And overly emotional.

I got to work this morning and pushed the elevator button. The light above a car flashed, as the car was already there, but the door closed when I pushed the button, and the button deactivated, so I couldn't get on that one or summon another. Then two women with too much makeup and too much perfume got on the first one that came, along with seven other people, all of whom were going to lower floors than I was. By the time I got to my office, I was on the verge of tears for no reason at all. And I still am.

This is all made worse by a combination of my truly ambivalent feelings about work and my overwhelming (and not at all unrealistic) fear that I am going to be fired while on leave. My hours have been really bad for a long time now, and that is how we are judged here. From what I've heard, they give you one review period (six months) before they let you go, but with a second you are at real risk of firing. And my review will be while I'm out on leave, and my hours sucked this period too (as they did in the last), putting me in that "real risk" category.

Were this to come to pass, I don't know that it would be that hard to get a new job doing the same basic thing at a decidedly similar place (though I probably won't be able to go part time, which could be a real problem, since I'm not sure who will take care of our child if P gets a job an hour from our house, which is what he wants, and I have to work 60+ hours a week, as day cares don't do long hours, and I would really prefer not to have to do that), but, coming back to that ambivalence, I'm not sure I even really like what I do. But I earn 80% of our household income, and P really wants/needs to get out of his job, which will entail a further paycut for him, so I think I'm stuck doing this for a while longer (which seems fair, since it's only been three years and I still have 40K in law school debt, plus we have a mortgage, payments on the new car, the rising cost of oil to heat our drafty house, etc.). My other ambivalence issue is that fact that in addition to not being sure I like what I do, I'm not sure I'm very good at it. I think this is in part what kept me up last night and is contributing greatly to my stress these days. But I don't know whether I'm really not good at it or if I just feel that way right now because I'm tired and probably should have stopped working a week or two ago. Right now, I just wish I had an easy job with some real job security.

Today may be one of those days where I close my office door and cry for a while.