The Nuclear Option

A week like this leaves me dreaming of our nuclear option.

After we both started working, Michael and I needed to remind ourselves that we are not stuck. If we're unhappy, we have options. New York is an amazing place to live, and it is also incredibly difficult. We look around at friends who live in Virginia or Florida or Texas or Barcelona to remind ourselves that our lives could be very different. We could live somewhere affordable, somewhere drivable, somewhere even just slightly slower and less... demanding. We daydream about packing our bags and moving to some small, liberal university town, say Chapel Hill or Charlottesville or Asheville or (yes, dare I say) Austin. We dream about having regular dinners with family members, sharing day-to-day routines with siblings. We talk about leaving the city, Michael passing the bar in another state, and us living a less expensive, more reasonable existence. This is our "nuclear option."

This week left me dreaming for it. Gone are the glory days of last weekend! This week, Michael worked until 8, 9, 12, 10, 7 and just headed in for a Saturday at the office. I worked until 6, 7:30, (sick day), 7 and 8. And I could (and maybe should) put in another few hours this weekend. We make a good living, but it seems so hard to believe we could ever buy an apartment, let alone a house, in this area. I still feel guilty taking a cab or buying clothes. Sometimes it feels like we're working this hard just to tread water.

And so on a week when we never left work - where we were always anxious and thinking about what we had to do and who we needed to approach - the nuclear option is incredibly appealing.