So Erika calls me yesterday on her way home from work with some interesting questions, specifically about work and salary and quality of life and priorities. I’ll try to do it justice here, but it’s hard to do that since it’s only me talking writing.

A lot of the conversation was about the sacrifices you make in order to have a career, and what that means. How do people work 80 + hours a week and still have significant others, go to the gym, cook or clean their houses, play with their children, and commute?

At the height of the craziness of my old job, I don’t think I ever worked more than 65 hours a week. When I got home from work, I was dead all the time. Like, didn’t want to do anything besides watch tv. I didn’t cook, cleaned minimally, and certainly didn’t have the time or energy to take care of another person, much less a CHILD. Eek.

So how does it work? If I decide to go to law school and I’m working a kazillion hours a week to try to make partner, what do I lose in my personal life? If Erika becomes the Queen Project Manager and is making 100K a year, does that make up for the long hours and lack of time to go to the gym and diminished free time? We were talking about that too – that once you get to a point in a career where you’re making what we consider “serious money”, what do you lose in other parts of your life? How much more money are you spending to facilitate your job where you earn 100k vs. your job where you were earning 50K?

Because something has to go, you know? But how much? Probably giving up cooking. Maybe cleaning too, because no time to clean. Daycare. No more bargain shopping because no time to dig for stuff at the stores. No shopping around for airfares or tires for your car or the cheapest cell phone plan.

But again, where do you draw the line? If I do go to law school, I want to be a good attorney. I don’t want to do a half-assed job, you know? Erika wants to be a good project manager. Mitch wants to be a good physician. Right now, that means accepting his on-call shifts at the hospital and working bizarre hours and not seeing his wife or friends very much some weeks. But he’s decided he doesn’t want to go into surgery, because he doesn’t want to give that much of his life up during residency. Is he selling himself short? Mitch would have been a great surgeon. He will also be a great radiologist, but I think he feels some guilt about choosing what he perceives as quality of life over his career.

Should he feel guilt about that? Don’t even want to start on the feminist thing either – if I get a great education (actually, more great education) and opt to work part time or to enter a field that isn’t as intense, am I selling myself and my entire gender short? If I don’t take the opportunities that I have and that my mother and aunts and grandmothers didn’t have, am I betraying myself and those women?

So many questions. I would love to hear if you guys have any input – I know many of you have asked or are asking the same questions. What have you come up with? Is there an answer? Please leave a note or email me at princessjeanneAThotmailDOTcom.