stress and adaptation

note well, i love my new job, but... it's a lot of change. h_postmortemus and i have been lucky to not really have long commutes. we have in fact, used a desire for a short commute as a decision making factor. now, all the sudden, i have a job with a 20+ mi one way trip. i understand this is not a lot for some people, but it's a bit of an adjustment for me. instead of going down such and such road, i go down the same initial set of roads and then a couple of highways. i think i've just about got the lane changes down and i haven't made any real boneheaded mistakes yet. our house is far enough north that i can justify taking 540 instead of 440 to cary (if you're not local, just play along) which means i'm going the opposite direction from the bulk of the commuters, which is great, but that last bit where i head towards durham in order to go home always makes me think twice. i've had my odometer set on 'trip clock' and the miles just go streaming by. it's a good thing i'm getting paid for this gig, because i'm using vast amounts of gas. the worst part is knowing that i'm on the other side of the world from husband and baby and i can't just drop everything and run home at lunch time. that makes it easier in other ways, because it means that i get all of my one hr lunch for relaxation. i honestly don't know what to do with so much time and have started bringing my tax work in to study.

the other change this week is that i am starting another new tax class. this is the beginning level one that i should be taking now and it's a prereq for a lot of other courses. what this means to me is an even more drastic cut in family time. tuesday i was at work all day. wednesday (today) i went home, greeted husband and baby, ate dinner and then went out to class for 3 hrs. tomorrow i will go straight from work to class and get back home around 9:30. that's 14 hrs out of the house and away from sylvia. theory A states that it might be easier if sylvia doesn't see me at all. theory B states that she will not be able to cope with this. i have instructed jeff to call me if she shows any signs of not coping. the wednesday course does not have an attendance requirement or a final (the EA exam itself is its final) so i will be skipping it at least every other week. the only reason i went today is that we were scheduled to go over some fairly complex material. once we all get through this week it should all get much easier. i'm actually feeling a lot better now that i've gotten through the first class on a workday. i'm also afraid that all of the energy and enthusiasm i've had has been partially caused by a sheer lack of things to do and i'm going to find out that i'm seriously overbooked.

next post: what i actually do at my job and how much fun it is.