Work is just work?

When Josh first asked me if I would go with him to the Caribbean, I was like “um, go hang out on a beautiful island for 2 years and not have to work?  Hell ya!”  People asked me “You’re going to leave your job?  But you love your job.  What if you do long distance for two years until he’s back in the states?”  To me the answer was simple I love this man, I want to spend the rest of my life with him, nothing makes me happier than to be around him, and yes I love my job but it’s still just a job.  Work is still work, it’s not THAT fun.  Still he was very concerned about me leaving my career behind to follow his dreams.  Now I have a full understanding of why he felt this was such a big sacrifice, because I’m not really the kind of girl who likes to sit around and be on vacation for 2 years.  I didn’t fully realize but a whole lot of my self-identity is wrapped up in what I do for a living.  In the Mexican culture our mantra is “We work to live, not live to work”, and I’m a big believer in enjoying life and not missing it because of work.  However there’s another side of me that is ambitious. I want a career that fulfills me, one that I can be proud of and help people.  Without that there is a little piece of me missing.  Sure I have little side jobs to keep me busy, but it’s not quite the same.  I’m not working towards my long term goals of having a private practice of my own and teaching at a community college part-time.  Everything feels on hold.  And when I look to the future it feels as though things will never go back to the way they used to be, because for the next 4 years I’m going to be following my husband to where ever his clinicals are and then to where ever his residency is.  After that we want to start a family.  I used to be single, I used to live my life just for me….now I’ve started my own family, and for the first time I’m truly realizing just what that is going to mean.