American-Specific Anxiety

I grow less and less confident as the days go by that I will get either of the jobs I interviewed for. This has been causing me some stress which is personified by extreme mopiness and random acts of violence on Colfax, my cat. Nothing serious, I just throw him when he tries to sit on my face, he never seems to learn. Anyways, today, however, I had lunch with an Italian guy and an English lady from my german class who made me feel better about my predicament. The lady said I was being too American. The Italian guy agreed and said that he had been floating from job to job for years. I told them about how I was basically living off my "wife" and that it made me feel sort of worthless. But they explained that I'm looking at this from entirely the wrong angle. I am able to go to german class for three hours a day and take long lunches and naps in the afternoon. I am living the life. Apparently this situation is no problem for most European's to enjoy, but I can't help it. I feel unproductive. I haven't always been this way, but since law school I see myself at least partly as something with money-making potential. If you had a milk producing Holstein you wouldn't feed it and not milk it would you? Bad analogy--somehow I have emasculated myself. I shall overcome my own anxieties. It doesn't help, though, that every day I come home and Shannon asks me if I had heard anything from the jobs. When I say "no" she pauses looks a way grits her teeth for a second and says "oh," and then she smiles sweetly and says, "that's okay, it doesn't matter." Right.