My Little Mid-Life Crisis

I've been buying a lot of clothes lately, which is usually a sign that I'm anxious about something, although I try to tell myself that it's because of "work" and "summer" (most of my clothes are in C-Town and although Boyfriend and I meant to, we haven't been back once this summer to retrieve the things that I thought I would retrive once summer began.)

The past few days I didn't sleep very well, although I felt fine at work.

I feel restless and anxious, like I have some urgent things on my mind, though I can't figure out what they are. I think it was the conversation with KS on Tuesday that affected me. KS went to exactly the same undergraduate and law school as I had, so I felt a bit of alumni kinship with him. (He also went to the same ritzy private school in DC that Dickie went to). On the way back from the polygraph test, I asked him how long it had been since he had worked in my office. He said since 1998. He started out his career working for a prominent DC firm that does primarily litigation, then decided to move with his wife to this area because they wanted to start a family. He first worked in a small practice that he started with some other folks. (This part I didn't really quite follow, but I didn't' want to interrupt his flow). I think it was his wife who first got a job in my office. He worked then for a small firm right in the city, then went over to this office too. I think his wife is no long working in the office, though once again I'm not sure.

It's how he describes his current life that struck me. He described working for the DC firm as "very lucrative, but some of the work you do is not necessarily pleasant." I had heard this before, of course. But then, he said: "and now, the money is not too bad. I can support a nice home close to the water."

(I of course immediately went and looked up his address and google-earthed it to see how close to the water it really was. And it WAS close to the water -- it was the second house down from a large public beach near N-Town.)

Then, just as we walked into our office building, he said: "Of course, now I have to decide if I want to send my kids to private school. If so, then I have to figure something out."

Perhaps it's because I feel a bit of kinship with this person that I was so struck by his concerns. I guess in a flash I looked at the stuff that I'm likely to be thinking 15, 20 years down the road, and I suddenly felt suffocated. It's like looking at a life and thinking: do I want this? What do I want? A nice house by the beach in the suburbs; 2 kids that I can send to private school; working in a small colleagial office, doing financial ligitation and winning a few cases. Isn't that a good life? A life that most people would die to have?

But why do I feel so soffocated thinking about it? Thinking: That's IT? That's what my life is going to be like? It's a view down a predictable, safe path, one that I know will make me reasonably happy, probably, but one that also terrifies me. Will I get bored? Will I be disappointed? Will I feel trapped? Will I envy those with more money or success than me? But even if I had chosen THEIR life, would I then regret not spending more time with my family, my children. Do I even want children? Would I want to be tied down like that and take over the terrifying responsibility? Would I be happy with ANY kind of life? But what kind of life do I really want? And would it be too late to change if I realized that I was wrong?

:D large dungeness crabs with vinegar, ginger, and garlic sauce
:( angst.