Recommended: Why PepsiCo CEO Indra K. Nooyi Can’t Have it All
I always thought “having it all” would mean being CEO of a Fortune 500 company. What I don’t understand is how I’ve worked so hard my whole life just to be some middle-management nobody.
I gave up having kids. I walked away from any man who took me seriously. I figured, just have a sports car, an apartment in the city/on the beach and own a cat, and you won’t have any strings and you CAN put in the hours and effort needed to rule the world.
*insert Vinny Barbarino “Hah” laugh*
Be ready to travel. Check. For trips that don’t come anymore. Check, check.
Be available at all times. Check.
Glue your fat ass to your chair and don’t even get up to pee just in case somebody needs you and/or because there’s always something else to do and someone else to please. Check.
You know, I’m not saying I regret anything I did in the name of trying to be successful. I just have to agree with Indra Nooyi when she said our biological clocks and career clocks are working against each other.
Sometimes I get so frustrated with taking care of my mom. And I realized something today in one of my passive-aggressive rage moments to which I inflict her far too often. Which is that she’s like having a kid. Maybe I just commit to 18 years (seven down so far) and like most parents, I can have my “me” time.
I get loopy because when all the grandparents/great-grandparents/other assorted relatives died, she was finally free. Then we moved to Amityville, she fell in the stairwell and her health went straight into the toilet.
What if when I’m on my own again, I can’t get to all the things I missed out on because of being tied so tightly to the cross that I couldn’t move my feet?
In any event, if I”m not going to be the CEO of a company and being goddess of all I survey is all I’ve got, is it going to be enough?
In other words, can I live with “giving up everything to have it all” and only ending up with about half of what I expected?
Or is that a lot better than most will ever experience?