Daily Blague

The Daily Blague is hardly the most confessional of Web logs, but I've always wanted to let readers have some sense of what my life is like. At the same time, I don't ordinarily find it difficult to be discreet. I've little inclination to write about things that can't be written about.

Kathleen's job change has been an exception. For quite some time, the two of us have wondered if and where Kathleen might find a partnership at a law firm capable of sustaining her growing practice. Moving from one law firm to another is an incredibly delicate process, but I have to say that Kathleen had an easy time of it. It could have been vastly disagreeable.

But from the inside, it has been wearying. There is the secrecy, which isn't really in our natures. (For a long time, we told no one.) There is the prospect, followed by the reality, of leaving a partnership of which Kathleen is very fond, and at which she has spent many happy (if overtired) years. Finally, there is the recognition that, after a certain age, change is almost as taxing as it might be beneficial, at least while it's ongoing.

I don't know how I should have endured the suspense and the anxiety - anxiety about Kathleen's getting enough sleep - if I hadn't had this blog to keep me busy. At the same time, I'm amazed that I was able to focus on it, and with an increasingly stable lens. I won't say that I've written bright and cheerful pieces while in the grip of black doubt - contrary to the expectations of friends and relations, it was never a foregone conclusion that Kathleen would find what she needed - but I have learned to work as hard as I can whenever it is possible to imagine being bright and cheerful. I have developed an almost grim attachment to the weekly Book Review review, even though it always feels like a new kind of hangover on Monday mornings.

I can take it.

Well, I wouldn't go that far. I've been very cranky, which wasn't exactly helpful to Kathleen, because I'm too profoundly bourgeois to adapt to uncertainty. As if she had nothing else to do, Kathleen has had to buoy up my spirits from time to time, and she has always done so with the bold assertion that, as SPDR Woman of Wall Street (which she really is), she would make something happen. At a minimum, this has reminded me that I have a page to write - I have to make something happen.

PS: Almost everyone, including lawyers familiar with Kathleen's practice who ought to have known better, has expressed the hope that Kathleen would be able to take some time off between jobs. If only. In fact, nothing could be harder to swing right now than a vacation, even a short one. This happens to be the busiest time of the year for Kathleen.