More on "Get to Work," my personal/political life

Since I read Linda R. Hirshman's "Get to Work" on Sunday, it seems like every thing I do is political. If I wipe the counter in the kitchen and I know the crumbs aren't mine, I think, Why the heck am I doing this? Or while hanging up my dad's laundry, or picking up my sister's shoes, I'm thinking, Goddammit, I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. Is that what I'm doomed to if I get married and want kids? Ridiculous.

I don't want to take Hirshman's words as gospel truth, but I see her point, I see how my options aren't really options, how whatever I "choose" wouldn't really be a "choice," how feminism hasn't come far enough, into families and marriages. I see how whoever makes the money has the power. I see the woman caring more about housework and losing out more in an imaginary divorce and then doing the (completely valueless) work herself. I don't want that to be me.

I want to be loved and adored by a man, but I also want my meaningful work. And I know my work is important, and I know it's not high-powered and hugely money making the way Hirshman defines success, but it's quite possible that I could make more money than my future husband. I've got eight years of library work under my belt, and I don't plan on giving it up for anything, especially not with the graduate degree under way.

I want what I want, and I don't want to have to try to fit into some Boundless Christian wife model. I'm a believer in Jesus, but I don't feel that this means my husband's work takes precedence over my work. I could care less about the "biblical model," as Candice Watters calls it, when it comes to my resume vs. his.

That's when I just get pissed off, the way I can tell Linda Hirshman got pissed off, and I want to scream and have every woman who's in college read this book as part of that "Life Skills 401" class I think should be offerred at the end of everyone's senior year. Because this is life-changing stuff, and it's everyone's business.

And now, on my one day off this week, wherin I work nearly 40 hours and do graduate school homework and my own laundry and cooking, I am going to attend noon mass at the Cathedral.