Attaining Balance

Nobody in the three acute early afternoon appointments at the moment.  Gives me a chance to breathe.  I think the laptop on its docking station is about 2" too tall for ergonomic typing; there is a Bluetooth keyboard in its future.  After I get paid. 

I'm the only one who stays back here during the lunch break - it's quiet, no distractions.  A chance to sort of sit in my new office (blue and red walls!) and soak up the reality of what I am.  Alone, at lunchtime, with CCR humming off of the iPod and nobody asking my opinion on anything, I don't have to be sure of myself.  I don't have to tell anyone how they're supposed to do it...
Now you get to do it your way. I've heard that refrain a lot these days, at work. How do you want me to do it? And it turns out that despite doing things the way everyone else does it for the last four years, I do have preferences. And all of a sudden everyone wants to know how I want it done. I'm supposed to give orders - expected to, really. 
It's moving slowly.  I'm used to dictums coming down from above - and yet, for four years, I complained that I wanted it done my way - so now's my chance.  The locus of control has moved to me, and that takes some getting used to.

But at home, it's different - because I'm not the boss there.  Angel and I have run this marriage as an equal-share partnership since before we were married; each of us giving it everything.  And it works that way, because we are equal share partners.  The trick is to go from being the boss here - the doctor that I am and I'm expected to be, who's in charge, gives orders, tells people how it's going to be - to go from being that to being a wife.
I don't run the house.  Lord knows, if I did, some things would never get done.  But I have to do my part in running it - and finding that balance has been a difficult thing.  Faced with the constant encouragement to manage and my natural tendencies to try and run things, I've found myself becoming more and more of a hands-off dictator at home: lists, orders, and a whole lot of "why didn't you...?".  And that's not what's held us together for the last twelve years, and it's certainly not forming much cohesive glue these days.

Doctor, it hurts when I do this.  Well, then don't do that.