Back when I spent my days as a desk jockey or as an indentured retail servant, enslaved to paying off my credit card debt, I pretty much woke up every day thinking the same thing: What is the little kernel of incentive that is going to get me through this day? The answer to that question was, sadly, usually one or all of the following:- Today is two days before sabbath. - Today is three days before sabbath. - At least today is not Monday. - I have enough on my Starbucks gift card for a caramel Frappuccino.

I have had some good jobs and some jobs that filled me with a violent urge to hose Goo Gone all over the leftovers in the staff fridge. I have held jobs that I found fulfilling and meaningful and I have held jobs where I would have to give myself a Richard Simmons pep talk just to get off at the right T stop to go to work instead of just sitting there paralyzed, riding the Red Line to Alewife and back until someone called to see if I was ever going to show up or if they should dispense of my employer life insurance policy because I had died.

Now that I no longer receive a paycheck for the work I do, both as a student who is allegedly finishing her thesis and as a mother and wife, the question of what incents me to go about my day is no longer very relevant at all. I feel as though I always have a reason much bigger than myself to get up each day, and sometimes that is daunting and sometimes that is humbling but mostly it is part and parcel with whom I am and that has made all the difference. What I do is almost implicit in who I am, and I am okay with it.

Today I awoke knowing it would be a rainy day where Baby Girl, whose cough right now makes her sound like a seagull with emphysema, would also have to get some shots. I knew I probably would not get to work out as I had hoped, but I really felt at peace with what I knew about how today would be. I think that encapsulates this season in my life as a mother. I am at peace with what I know I am meant to be doing right now. I am waiting on some news regarding a job opportunity for the fall, and although it is easy to become jittery about what may or may not work out, I am trying to cultivate peace, to have the "patience of the saints" as Revelation talks about, and to find the little incentives barring trips to Sixbucks to get me through the day.