Having it all...and then some

So these past two weeks, I've been doing the part-time contract at work, although really I've been working full time, trying to finish up a couple of reports that were part of my original contract. But by the end of the month, I'll be at home with Dan, and will hopefully be able to work out a part-time slot at Ginny's daycare, so she'll have the best of both worlds. Anyhow, the gradual slow-down with my work (I mean, the idealized future slow-down, as it hasn't happened yet) begs the time-honored question: can anyone truly have it all?

I know it's a hackneyed topic, but this question is something that people, and perhaps women especially, really wrestle with. Case in point: my dear friend Ashley is looking for a job (this is the rock star girl, the really young Ph.D). She wants something that will fulfill her academic potential, but will also be flexible when she gets around to starting a family. Not actually an easy task. Academia, and even your average College of Education (the context she and I are most familiar with), is still somewhat hostile to women with families. Of course, there are very successful moms working in these places, but getting and KEEPING a tenure-track job is tough, and when you have to take time off for maternity leave, etc, it can be difficult to keep up with your male peers.

My situation is a little different, as I've always had a non-tenure track job with the university. Still, I know I'm nowhere near as productive as I was BC (before children). Does this mean that my male colleagues are superior employees? No, actually--most of them have some sort of personality disorder, or are pretty good at pushing their work off onto their lower-ranking female colleagues, which keeps us treading water career-wise, in perpetuity.

But I don't mean to be negative. The question of 'having it all' is more of an existantial problem. We are finite beings--we cannot occupy more than one space at a time. Yet, paradoxically, we occupy the past, present, and future, all at once. We have ambitions that outpace our abilities; our reach always exceeds our grasp. Yet, we still feel that more is more. It's part of the human condition.

So maybe we can't ever have it all. Maybe it's just not possible, or even desirable, when you get right down to it. But maybe the point is to die trying.