2005-03-27

What good am I?

Today was our choir Easter performance. We had another one on Friday, but my wife decided not to attend that one (although, since her niece was visiting to get help with her prom dress, it would've been easier if she decided to just leave the kids). I actually had fun singing, and I was actually feeling pretty good.

So I find my wife and kids after the performance. I give her a hug and say, "Thank you for coming." I was expecting her to stay at home, with some excuse about the kids bouncing off walls or something; so I wanted to at least acknowledge that I was glad she came. She replies with, "You're lucky you still have kids," and she proceeded to tell me what a pain they were. I mumbled something about, "I'm sorry you couldn't enjoy it." She didn't protest.

2005-03-16

Should I post this here?

It would be more appropriate to put this in a personal journal, but since I don't keep one (I really should), I might as well add it here.

Another birthday has come and gone (many days ago, so now I can talk about it without it being close enough to be worth thinking about except as a passing thought), and I was almost successful in getting by without notice. The company CEO did send out a happy birthday e-mail to the whole company (one day early), so I had to at least admit the day at work. Fortunately, our team took a little field trip to some of our client sites that day, so stopping for a "birthday lunch" was more of an incidental rather than a special event.

And at home, it was mostly just another day. Just a couple of cards from the wife and kids to open at dinner, and trying to ignore the phone calls from the parents calling to say happy birthday (thank goodness for answering machines, or I'm sure my mom would've tried calling all night). Fortunately, my wife hadn't decided what to get me and planned on asking me about it, so I could tell her that I didn't want anything, that it was just another day.

So why am I feeling like this? It's not something I really want to talk about, not even semi-anonymously on a random internet page. I guess a 50,000' summary would be that I'm not happy at work, and although I could change that, it wouldn't matter because I'm not happy at home either, and no amount of success at work can make up for failure in the home.