For this month’s COTM I’ve asked my friends to think about their work / life balance. What would be an ideal balance between work and home life look like, or is it all actually the same thing? And what about the future, will things change as we head into our 30’s or 40’s?
I’ve had a lot of VERY different jobs with VERY different work / life balances and now that I’m at the place in my life where it’s time for me to actively choose how I want to spend my time, I’m honestly a bit confused. What is the best balance?
When I was a high school basketball coach my time was spent mostly as my own, only a few hours in the afternoon or evenings were required to get a decent salary that paid for rent and food, but I didn’t have enough work, didn’t feel like I was participating in society or pushing myself. When I worked as a science teacher at a summer camp I made friends with my students and coworkers, but came home exhausted everyday from running around keeping kids happy and safe. When I worked at an engineering company I got to choose my own hours, taking weeks off without trouble and leaving work at work, but that wasn’t ideal either – my passion for life faded a bit while I worked there, the work I was doing didn’t make me happy. So now that I’m working at a startup where there is never a shortage of things that need to be done, I’m struggling with how much time is too much, and which parts of my life can fall by the wayside.
There are so many things that make up a great life – family, friends, alone time and significant others are only part of the equation, there are projects and houses, travel and outdoor adventures, even activism and community work that are essential to really having a good life. How do we find the time for all this other than to combine it all? I was talking to a friend at a wedding this weekend and he said that we spend something like 75% of our waking hours at work so we might we might as well enjoy what we do and who we do it with. I don’t love my coworkers but he’s right, it would do me good if I did, because we spend more time with them than we do our families and friends combined.
Work has been better lately, my boss made a promise to his girlfriend to have dinner with her every night at 6, so now I get leave at a normal hour as well, though I still think about work when I’m not there and struggle with who and what to do when I’m not working. I always feel like I should be somewhere else, checking something or someone off the list. We’ll see how I do in the coming months and years, more and more it feels like maybe the only way I know how to have a work life balance is to keep them apart entirely – to work like mad for a year and then take a year off.
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Whew… that is an important question. Honestly, it is something that I ponder on now and again. I am currently getting my PhD, so I guess you could say that my life versus work balance leans a bit more to the work side. It is not so much that I work more hours than other people my age, but work definitely has an overarching impact on my life, consuming my thoughts in a way probably most normal jobs wouldn’t. Does that matter? Well, sometimes people I love suggest that maybe this isn’t the best way, that working less, being settled, having kids and the ‘normal life’ is really the better choice. That by focusing so much on a ‘career’, I have my priorities out of order. This type of advice distresses me a little. I know that there is something to this thinking, but I kick back against it because, really, I love what I do. I love it every day. Maybe my ‘work’ takes more of my time, and more of my energy, than an easier job would, but it is something that I find exciting and rewarding. I do want to have a family and kids someday, but is it a terrible thing to want both?
The academic job market is pretty sparse- especially in the humanities- so it is difficult to know what exactly the future holds for me. Maybe that perfect academic position will never come along. And if it doesn’t, I will accept it. I don’t want ever to feel constrained by some boundless ambition that I need to be at the top of the ladder, but at the same time I am not willing to give up or feel I missed out on my chance. For the moment at least, I am okay with work getting the larger slice of the pie. Will that change with time? Of course, it might! I completely open to that— the future is unpredictable. For the moment though, I count my blessings for where I am.
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I think that spending as much time with your family and friends as at work is important. However, I have yet to find a company that feels this way. I don’t mean to be a pessimist but most companies I’ve had experience with only care about squeezing as much work as possible out of you.
My current job, for instance, won’t even give me Sundays off even though it’s the only day my husband and I can have off together. I just don’t understand why corporations can’t seem to understand what it would do for morale to show employees that they care about their free time. I really don’t think it’s healthy for work to be all consuming. One of my supervisors recently worked 18 hrs straight and when I saw her at the end of her shift she felt physically sick. I don’t want that kind of life. Work will never hold that most important place in my life.
Knowing what I do, it makes me seriously consider being a stay at home mom when I start a family. Because I just don’t want to be forced to choose between family and work. I am a better worker when the balance between family and work is even. If only I could find a company that understood that.
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Thanks for the great question this month, Aurora. I currently feel like I enjoy a pretty ideal work-life balance. I work full-time as a teacher, a job I love, and I’m home each day by 4:00. Usually, an English teacher like me would inevitably bring a lot of grading home with her, but in the school where I work now, our student numbers are so low that I’m able to avoid most of that, which is fantastic. So occasionally in the evening or on the weekends I’ll need to spend an hour or two grading essays or writing lesson plans, but overall my work life and personal life are pretty separated, which I like.I believe that work shouldn’t be everything—it’s much more important to invest in relationships with family and friends outside of work than to climb the ladder at the expense of your true happiness. Then again, if you have a job you love, why not throw yourself into it whole-heartedly? Our time on this earth is short, and if we’re really going to “do something” with our lives, it’s going to require time and effort. It’s also possible to build great friendships through your work, and I know some people consider their colleagues to be a second family to them, which also helps to bridge that work-life gap.
I certainly privilege time with my husband, travel, and my own leisure time more highly than I do my job at this point. But a lot of that has to do with the fact that I’m not the primary breadwinner in our family, and most likely never will be. I’m looking forward to taking a year (or two, or five, or ten) off when we have kids, and I’m blessed that this will be feasible for us financially. Then again, I also love my work and would love to stay in the teaching field somehow while simultaneously raising my children. If I could work part-time, I suppose for me that would be absolutely perfect.
Of course, the perfect work-life balance is something that will look different for every person. But I think you know when yours isn’t quite right. And it’s important to trust that instinct and do what you can to find fulfillment, both professionally and personally.
The best part of my work-life balance is having summers off! Which is about to happen in just 5. MORE. DAYS. 😀 The cyclical nature of teaching is one thing I really like about my job. Every year you get a fresh start, and you’ve just had a long break to recharge yourself. There’s always something to look forward to, and you get to work with new students every year. I guess it’s a little bit like what you said, Aurora, working super hard for a year and then taking a year off would probably work for some people. It’s somewhat similar with teaching–you work your ass off for 9 and a half months, and then you can breathe again and get ready to jump back into it anew.