Please send in your time sheet by Friday

This is the first time I've worked for a company that has clients, meaning this is the first time I have to bill my time on a daily basis.

It's a completely different way of thinking about time, and assessing my day. It requires a new kind of consciousness to the way I think about working. I'm not just doing my work for the sake of doing a good job, which is always how I've thought about it in the past. I'm actually taking 10 minutes here, an hour or so there and dedicating it completely to someone else's whims.

You can make the argument that in any job you bill your time to the company that you work for, but when you don't have clients, you're not cognizant that every bathroom break, every Facebook hiatus, every second you spend munching on that candy bar you hide in your desk instead of working is billed to someone.

What if we could extend this work model to the rest of our lives? That question got me thinking about how I spend my spare time, and how much of it is motivated by outside forces, and occasionally, people. I came up with a list of 13 things I do on a weekly basis, and who or what I do them for.

1. Three hours of working out to beauty magazines.

2. About one cumulative hour of sneezing to my guinea pigs. I can't live without them, but I'm deathly allergic to them.

3. Two hours of cleaning the kitchen to my boyfriend and his growing interest in the culinary arts.

4. An hour and a half of changing outfits in the morning to my mother. Her voice will forever echo in my head telling me I can't wear gray, that's not flattering, that doesn't match, etc.

5. Two hours and forty-five minutes of cleaning the apartment to my guinea pigs. Their daily average mess probably doubles their body weight.

6. Four hours of feeling guilty about doing nothing after work to Judaism.

7. Seven hours of still not doing anything despite the guilt to Facebook and the age 23.

8. Three hours of late night snacking to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

9. Five hours of nagging my boyfriend to my mother and chick flicks.

10. Five hours of him taking it to his mother, who instilled Jewish family values in him at a young age.

11. Three hours of wondering if I should wax my eyebrows to my mother.

12. Two hours of realizing I don't actually care to my father.

13. Thirty minutes of throwing up a little in my mouth when the commercials for "Sex in the City 2" come on to realizing working one hour a week and being able to afford fancy dinners, cocktail parties and designer clothes was never intended to be real.

Right now, for now

It's been a really long time since I've posted. Since then, I bumped up my moving date by two months, moved across the country and started a new job. This is the first time in my life I've committed to something without an end date.

It wasn't until I was a junior in college, and began to watch some of my friend start their job hunt, that I realized what I wanted as a 20 something post-college. Some of my friends wanted adventure. They traveled the world, many of them entering teach-English-abroad programs and using the opportunity to absorb new cultures. Others wanted to continue school. I have friends in law school and various other grad school programs.

I wanted stability. I wanted to make my own money, have a career I could excel in, and not have to wonder if after a certain date, I'd be waiting tables or ordering my second batch of business cards.

I've wanted this since I was a junior in college, when I was too young to have it. I wanted it after I graduated, when I was working a great job in Madison, as a limited term employee, enjoying being a professional, but wondering what would happen when my year was up.

I started in DC as an intern at a small online marketing firm. I was an intern for less than two weeks. On Thursday I was hired for, what in all accounts, is my dream job.

I am so excited and I feel so lucky. I worked hard, but I know that I have impeccable timing and a series of very random, and very fortunate events to thank.

My whole life I've always been working for what comes next. In high school I tried to get into a good college. In college I worked to get good internships, and, eventually, a good job. Now, I have a good job, and I intend to stay there for awhile. It's not like an internship, where I work hard to one day get a better one.

We live in a goal-oriented world, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But it makes me think about the pressure that we all endured as kids, and that, undoubtedly, our kids will feel. For them, everything is about what comes next. It's never about right now, and the few times it is, it's often written off as a distraction.

I don't know if there's a better way, but I know there was rarely an hour, between the time I first heard the word ACT and last Thursday, that I wasn't worrying I wasn't working hard enough to get what I wanted. And that I would fail.

For the first time in my life, I can enjoy worrying about doing well at what I'm doing for the sake of doing well, and not for something far in my future I can't yet comprehend.

But I don't quite understand how to do that yet. When my brain defaults into, "oh crap, what am I not doing right now that I should be doing to not screw myself over," mode, it takes a minute to remind myself I don't have to do that anymore...for now.

I'm sure there will be some promotion or some project with a very specific long-term goal I'll be focused on soon enough. It won't be long until I forget all about this brief interlude. I just hope that one day, when I have children, and they're freaking out about college or an internship or even soccer tryouts, that I'll remember this, and have something insightful to say. Because right now I don't. I can just say it is what it is. For now.