I'm the Daddy

So I left for work this morning and was struck by a strange thought as I hurried along the canal:

I'm the only person in my household who has a full-time job.

niallm is self-employed and glitzfrau is doing her doctorate full-time as of last month - and more power to her! Both do at least as much work as I do, but neither does it Monday to Friday, 9:30 to 5:30, in an invariable location. (My job setup is very traditional: rock-solid working hours, no working from home, very little overtime, no travel.)

The thing is, this model of employment is weird for me. My parents are both academics, so the mental map of adult work that I developed when I was growing up assumed an irregular schedule and a high degree of intellectual control over most aspects of the work (and it's not that I had a rosy picture of what the academic life entails: the hard work going on was unmistakable; midnight oil was a household staple).

The only time I've been part of a household where all the adults worked full-time was the eleven months that Niall and I lived together before he started his company. Eleven months, when set against twenty-four years, is not a long time in which to embrace and assimilate an unfamiliar lifestyle.

I feel like the subject of some sinister experiment. My weeks and months have this bizarrely inflexible - nay, Procrustean - structure, in which circumstances external to my work are considered irrelevant. The natural peaks and valleys of my motivation and productivity are artificially flattened, and the fact that it is futile to struggle against this does not alleviate the discomfort.

Meanwhile, my housemates' lives look normal to me. I'm wondering when my life is going to get back to normal.

(It'll happen. There are other ways to earn a living. I won't be in full-time employment for many more years. I'm certain of that.)