On Happiness

I am a pretty happy guy. I just got a pretty nice new-to-me car. We live in a sweet apartment that has space, central heating and cooling, plows in the winter, as well as access to a pool, hot tub, and exercise room. I just got married.

I cannot, in all honesty, say that I love my job, though to simply say that I do not hate it is not fair either. I like aspects of my job - love them, even - and I like the environment.  I have flexible hours, a great degree of autonomy, and a really good boss who seems to understand that mistakes happen, and that it is important for employees to feel valued and respected, which I do. Unlike some jobs I have, I almost never dread going in to work, and the days that I lie in bed and ponder calling in sick to spend the day sleeping in or vegging on the couch have more to do with my wife having the day off than anything going on at work. I think the best way to put it is that I enjoy my job, and that is pretty darn good.

I mentioned a wife in that last paragraph, and I did indeed get married recently.  She is beautiful and smart, and can light up my day with her smile. I've known her for over 6 years, have lived with her for four, and I still want to spend every waking (and, frankly, non-waking) moment with her. I've known plenty of women.  I've had crushes and gone on dates, and even been in relationships. There is one big difference with my wife, though: she is the first woman to make me want to better myself.
I snore, and a big reason for that is that I am overweight. Being overweight leads to other issues too, from not fitting in certain seats to not being able to be as active as we would both like. I want to lose weight so that I can snore less, and she can sleep better. I want to lose weight so that when we get on the plane to go on vacation, I am not spilling over into her seat. When I was being fitted for my suit for the wedding recently, and the shirt they'd picked out for me (that had fit a couple months earlier) was too tight, I was devastated. Not because I was fat - I've been fat for a while now - but because I felt like I'd let her down.

As an example of how awesome she is, she saw my expression, squeezed my hand, and smiled up at me.

This is not to say things have always been rosy. There have been some rough patches. It's not easy to balance school, work, and home when you're working towards a normal degree, let alone a nursing degree. I don't mean to disparage those that have gotten an MBA, or have gone back to school to get a degree in something like English or Economics. The thing is, for most degrees, you work during the day, go to class at couple nights during the week, and do your homework the other nights. The rest of the time, you tend to the house, spend time with the family, veg on the couch, etc. When you're taking night classes to work towards an associate' and then a bachelor's degree in nursing, things are not that simple.

First off, it's not just class, it a class and a clinical, meaning the nights you're not sitting in a classroom, you're working in a hospital. So, there goes your weeknight free time. Secondly, if you're working, it's probably in a hospital, and while I'm sure there are nursing positions in the hospital that have very regular hours - working until 3:00 means you leave at 3:00. Unfortunately, the ER is not one of those places. So, if you work in the ER in one town, and take classes 30-40 minutes away, you're not going to want to take shifts that might not let you out on time and make you late for class. This means nothing 1st shift, and 2nd shift is pretty much right out.

This leaves 3rd shift. Overnights. Even on weekends. In this scenario, your week looks something like: get up on Monday around 3pm, shower, eat breakfast, start homework/prep for clinical. 6pm, head to class/clinical. 10pm, finish with class/clinical, go to work for 11pm, get out around 7:30am, drive home and flop into bed to sleep. For a few hours during the day. On the rare night you're not working, you try to catch up on sleep. On the nights you don't have class/clinical, you're doing work for them.

You know what's not included in that schedule? Free time, because you don't really have any.
This was my wife's schedule for the better part of three years. When she graduated, both she and our families were effusive in their praise of the amount of work involved, but not just on her part. They were praising me, too. I deflected most of it, usually with the argument, "What else was I supposed to do?" because, for the most part, that was how it was.  She was in school, and needed my support.
Here's the deep dark secret about that: it took me a while to realize this. For the past few years, living alone, I did things a certain way. In particular, I wrote when I wanted to, did dishes rarely, and barely cooked for myself. After we started dating, I started learning how to actually cook. When she moved in, I started to care about dishes getting clean (mostly because we needed them to cook). For a while,  we shared in these chores, which we great, because it gave me time to write, or play video games, or read, or veg. Not long after she started school, I undertook another NaNoWriMo challenge (write a 50,000-word novel in a month), but I had trouble finding time to write, as I had to come home and cook dinner every night, which meant washing the dishes from the night before, which meant first emptying the dish drainer from the last time dishes were washed. By the time I was done all of this, I was tired, and just wanted to sit on the couch, so I did. Tension built, until one day I came home and, according to my wife, "Looked like someone killed [my] dog." I told her that I was frustrated that nothing was done in the kitchen (she hadn't worked the night before, so she didn't HAVE to sleep in), and that I felt like I was alone with the chores (except laundry - she did a lot of laundry, as she needed scrubs constantly). Her response was that I was alone. She was in the house, but all of her energy went towards school and work.

It took me a couple months after that to fully realize what she meant, and how selfish I was being. She was working as much as she could, and spending most of the rest of her time dealing with school stuff. She wasn't ignoring me, or bored with me, or losing interest in me (all very real thoughts that went through my head), or just slacking off. In fact, she was doing the opposite of slacking off; she was working two full-time jobs that consumed most of her time and energy. For me to complain that she didn't wash the dishes, and how that was a terrible inconvenience for me because I wanted to do something else that night was pretty selfish of me. I worked one job (for a while it was a miserable job, but that's neither here nor there), came home, and had the whole night to myself.

Once this dawned on me, there was no other option that seemed palatable to me but to support my wife in any way I could.

Now, as noted, when she started school, I was in a miserable state. I hated my job and made no money. Around the time she started school, I started helping a buddy at a couple of local fairs in the fall, which helped bring in some extra money. More important, it led to my current job, just a few months after working at the fairs. Suddenly I was making money more money in a more enjoyable workplace. This didn't curb my selfishness, but I think it helped me finally see it.

She had nudged me to work at the fairs. She nudged me to apply for the new job. She got me to eat less processed for and to cook more for myself. She has repeatedly given me confidence and support, and I felt like I let her down. I couldn't let that keep happening.

I like to think I took some things away from that. Our needs might not always be in sync, but we support each other the best we can. Neither of us is perfect; we don't always live up to our nobler aspirations, but we've each other, and support each other. I do what I can for her whenever I can, not because I have to, but because I am a happy guy, she is the main reason for my happiness, and I want nothing more in the world than for her to be as happy as me.