Tiger Alicia Sniffing Out Xanax

Roar! Tiger mom ambitions.

Lately, I am on a quest for Xanax. This quest for anxiety reduction pills is actually giving me more anxiety. I am going to start a job interview process and it has me stressing the fuck out. So, I would like to take a pill that will guarantee I do not choke.

These last couple years at home with my kids have been a blast, and it has allowed me to establish which kinds of jobs would be fitting for the type of work life balance I want to maintain. All the jobs I held prior to wiping noses, and booties, as well as fostering and stimulating a young vibrant mind, were very structured corporate jobs. 

I would go into the office in the morning, and leave in the evening Monday through Friday. A very common schedule, that seems to work well enough. However, it is not the environment where I could say, “I am leaving to go to my kids’ soccer game, and I am going to finish my work up later, at home while I watch Real Housewives and eat girls scout cookies.”

When going back to work, I will maintain an active presence in my kids day to day life, so I don't feel like our relationship is spent doing grocery shopping, laundry and cleaning on Saturdays and Sundays.

I thought about the best job ever for a parent, with children they still want to chauffer around and stand over their shoulder while helping them do their homework. It is being a professor.

I didn’t come up with the idea on my own; becoming a mom/professor was advice from the craziest involved mom, Amy Chua, the author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Her reasoning is that the flexibility of a professor’s schedule allows a parent to be around during the time a child is awake, rather than arriving home from the office an hour before the kids go to bed, and heading out the door shortly after the kids wake up in the morning. Teaching night classes, working Saturdays, as well as being able to do a portion of work from home, allows for more time to be active in the kids’ day to day life. In the Tiger Mom's case, she was able to dedicate her time at home to developing her children into musical geniuses. Her tactics were sometimes questionable, and as much as she talked about how her commitment to her kids was about personal sacrifice, it really was all about making herself feel accomplished.
I am nervous to ask my doctor for Xanax because she is a fit thirty something woman, and I am worried she will tell me that taking Xanax is for pussies and I need to stop being a whiney bitch. The Tiger Mom never mentioned if she takes medication to assist on her quest to greatness. I would not be surprised if her kids are popping anti-anxiety pills. After reading the part of the book where her second child falls into such a deep depression from feeling lack of control in her life that she cuts all her hair off, I was about to shed a tear thinking, this girl is going to be a little fucked up for the rest of her life.

I just need to suck it up and go ask my doctor. Maybe her mom was a Tiger Mom. She is a doctor, which takes a lot of dedication and hard work. Her mom had to have been giving her some gentle nudges toward her accomplishments. Hopefully, they were nudges with some cruel and demeaning undertones, leaving my doctor with the kind of fractured inner self where she would say, "I get you, girl. Xanax, coming up!"