The show so far...

I've been working a little over a month now; I've settled into my daily routines; I've survived my first tax season; I've got a couple of paychecks under my belt. So how do I feel about it all so far?

I don't know why this still comes as such a surprise to me, but I can say with complete confidence that I really love my job. Really. I mean, it is a job, not my life's passion--but in the context of it being a job, I love it. Shouldn't I? Isn't it wonderful to finally know, after all the hard work and all the doubt, after the frustration and tears, that I really did make the right decision--indeed, that I really did hear God correctly when I believed He was leading me this way?

Yes. It is wonderful. For the first time since I can remember, I feel very little stress--because I can leave work at work. During my final two years of college, I was always Laura the student--I rarely had time to play any other role. Now, while I am at work I can be Laura the accountant... and then when I come home, I can be whatever Laura I'd like: The writer? The cook? The trivia night aficionado? Sure, why not?

Best of all, I can be Laura the joyful again. Over the past eighteen months or so, up until we moved from Athens into our new place, I feared that I was slipping back into old habits--the cycle of depression that I struggled with for about a decade and then, finally, broke free from when I was nineteen. Long hours of grinding away at the Tax Code, at mergers and acquisitions, at risk management and effective interest amortization, made me withdraw from my friends and spend many, many hours feeling unhappy and lonely. I came out of college with a master's degree, a husband, and some lifelong friends... but I also came out shouldering a burden that I should have left forever buried after I finally cast it off six years ago. In a new city, at a new juncture along the path of my life, I think I have finally let those days go once and for all, and learned how to be secure and content with myself.

I will never know if all the gruelling work I put into my college days will have been worth it in the end. For in trying to excel, I lost sight of some important things--my faith, my security, my joy, my passions--at the risk of losing them forever. I could have done something else, and perhaps breathed a little easier during my college days; and perhaps I'd be just as content as I am now... or perhaps not. Like the pondering traveller in Frost's poem, I could not travel both paths at once; so I chose one, knowing that travelling one way meant forfeiting the chance to ever see what lay down the other road. And now, I tell it with a sigh--for I'll always wonder, somewhere deep inside, what would have happened if I'd chosen differently... But it serves no real purpose to look back and regret. The fact is, I am where I am now, and all that I can do from here is go forward from where I have already come.