A field guide to growing up without growing apart
This month we decided to talk about what, well, everyone is talking about. The US presidential election! All the princesses weigh in on what this election means to them and how they are managing to stay sane in an insane world. Well hi there, […]
Saying yes isn’t always easy. But I think it is worth it. We had much needed snow storm on Monday, bringing about two feet of snow to northern Utah. In years past we would have had feet of snow by this time of year, but […]
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.
With my 27th birthday (and therefore my “late 20s”) only a few months away, I’ve been thinking more and more about starting a family. Baby fever has started, I’d say, with so many cute littles popping up on my facebook newsfeed, and some of my […]
Depression and mental health are topics that we’re warned about during our teens, you know, those sensitive and formative years when everyone’s a bit angsty. But it seems to me that I’ve personally known more people struggling with these mental issues in my twenties than […]
I’m not much of a gambler. In fact in the three times I’ve been to Vegas I think I’ve only gambled once, more or less breaking even on a ten dollar bill in a slot machine. I don’t mind playing the games – Cindy and I made a few bets with the money of some flirtatious men one year, and I’ve played card games like poker with my family my whole life. But when it comes to betting money over 50 cents I cringe a bit, reminding myself that the house always wins, why play a game that doesn’t want someone to win?
But this week while visiting my grandmother and extended family in Minnesota I was pressured to join in on the fun, sitting down to put one dollar in a casino slot machine as we left a birthday party. As soon as I pushed the button lights and sounds went off immediately, and for the next 5 minutes we all watched as my total winnings went from one dollar to $66.50. As soon as it stopped I asked my aunt where the button to cash out was, feeling sufficiently ridiculous as the people around us realized I definitely hadn’t been playing long.
The thing is, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. And as I sat there watching the total go up I wasn’t really surprised. Setting the aside the obviously lucky things that I was born into, like a great family in a great neighborhood with great health, and ignoring the bigger real life things that I haven’t managed to figure out yet (like finding the perfect job and gaining future clarity), it is getting harder and harder to deny that in general I am more lucky than the average person.
I’ve caught gift certificates thrown into crowds of hundreds, narrowly made trains and planes, and won day of show theatre tickets to show sold out for weeks. I’ve been in the last group allowed to raft the Grand Canyon during the 2013 government shutdown and won permits to raft others, spent the day exploring Oxford with Reel Big Fish and seen the queen of Denmark just because I was in the right place at the right time. I’ve even scored winning baskets in the final seconds and run into people that I needed to see right then more than anything.
What is even more ridiculous is that my family is lucky too. There isn’t two weeks that go by that my mother, father, or brother doesn’t win something. Whether is a raffle prize, a nickel poker game or a t-shirt tossed into a crowd, we disproportionally win things. And it’s gotten to the point where they’ll purposely not enter contests for fear of winning them and taking the prize away from friends.
But maybe it is because we jump on these opportunities, not in spite of them, that we are so lucky. I wouldn’t have been able to win the $66 dollars if I never put the dollar in, never been able to catch the flight if I hadn’t decided I might as well run. So many of my favorite lucky moments in my life are because I reached for them, decided the risk was worth the chance of reward. Maybe luck comes from opportunity.
Gambling still isn’t really for me, but when it comes to most everything else, you can bet you’ll find me in the thick of it, because do you really mind a little losing if there is a chance you’ll win?
Ah, adulthood. Aren’t our 20s just chock-full of coming-of-age experiences? After all, that’s what this blog is about. Well, this December I reached another milestone of adulthood: I hosted Christmas for the first time. My in-laws were making their first (and hopefully not last) big […]
A few months ago the father of my close friends died. Our parents raised us together, me and a pair of twins, a boy and a girl (I’ll call them Rachel and Charles) and I’m so grateful for them. We lived on opposite sides of […]
It’s time for the holidays! What’s on your Christmas list this year? For us, not much, really. Just, you know, fulfilling careers, new cars, family approval, and more than 24 hours in the day. Hopefully we Naughty Princesses have been nice enough to receive a bit of what we’ve wished for.
Christmas! Eek! It’s the most wonderful time of the year, but this year I’ll be spending it abroad for the first time ever. First Christmas since birth not seeing my parents on Christmas morning to open gifts. First Christmas without a Starbucks red cup. Sigh. You get the picture.
But though it’s sad to be missing out on the festivities at home, I’m also really excited about hosting my first Christmas ever. My in-laws land here in the Sandbox in less than a week now, and we’ll be spending the next three weeks with them. Thus, I think my biggest Christmas wish this year is that this time would all go well and we’d manage to balance travel and new experiences with quality time and festive holiday traditions.
On actual Christmas we’ll all be camping in the desert in Jordan, which definitely WON’T be like Christmas jammies and stockings and all that. But I’m hoping it will be a memorable Christmas in a different way. After all, wasn’t the first Christmas spent by a young couple out in the desert, just a few hundred kilometers from where we’ll be?
My in-laws are bringing gifts, but honestly, there’s nothing I really need. The true gift is the fact that they are coming at all. That my sometimes hard-to-please mother-in-law is putting herself on a grueling, expensive flight to come to MY home for the holidays. It truly means a lot. But in 2.5 years of marriage, I’ve never hosted my husband’s parents, and they’ve never had the chance to see us in our “natural habitat.” That’s what makes this so exciting. I just hope I live up to their expectations (and my own) and can somehow create a Christmas to remember for all of us.
–Cinderslut
What’s on my Christmas list? So many things. I can think of a lot of things that I would love to have but that I can’t afford.
We need a new car. One that has airbags and 2 working headlights. We don’t have a TV right now. Our laptop is old and needs to be replaced. Our apartment is a crappy basement across from a giant noisy construction zone. But when I say all of those things I just feel like I’m complaining and sounding selfish. I feel guilty because, shouldn’t I just be able to count my blessings?
And then there are the more intangible things that I wish for as well. A new job. One that doesn’t make me crazy and maybe actually pays me a decent wage. More self-esteem and encouragement for my husband. Most of all I would love to get back the feeling and belief that I can do anything I want in life. I feel less and less like I have that choice every day. All the reports and studies I see are saying that companies won’t pay young people a wage that keeps up with inflation, and that we are being flooded with cheap jobs, but not decent ones. Oh for the idealistic views of my college days.
Now I feel like I’m being a huge Christmas downer. I actually love Christmas and I will still enjoy it regardless of my circumstances.
–Snow Whore
Christmas! Snow and lights and reunions and food! It’s hard not to adore this time of year, and now that I’m not living with my parents I’m really looking forward to spending as much time with them as I can over the holidays. I knew I’d miss living with them, but it’s definitely been just as hard as I expected. They’ve been my best friends for the last 2+ years, it is strange to suddenly have to treat them like parents again instead of roommates. But this is good for me, I know, and I know the real thing I’m stressed about is finding the right job.
Finding a career is at the very tip top of my Christmas list this year, and while I could also use ski pants, a nice winter hat, and brown boots, the only thing that I feel like I need a magic wish to get is a good job. I’m still so lost on what direction to go with my life and lately it feels like I’ve been looking to others to find out that career for me, hoping someone would just plop the answer in my lap. But when I think about it, I know that looking outside myself for approval or guidance is just getting me further from whatever it is I must know I want.
Today I’m supposed to apply to work with my friend (and housemate) as a billing specialist, a job that I’d learn a lot at but I’m not sure is really the direction I want to be going. I find myself dragging my feet as I fill out the application and I honestly don’t know if I should push myself and make it happen or if I should take a step back because I’m heading in the wrong direction. At Thanksgiving my uncle told me that I had to create my own job because applying for existing jobs is a thing of the past. My family friend thinks I should go back to school and get a masters in engineering and my parents are just as confused as I am, sending me mixed signals that I know I need to ignore but somehow always hit me right when I’m vulnerable.
All I want for Christmas is some clarity, and I think the only one who can give me this gift is me.
–Sleeping Booty
Honestly, I haven’t had the chance to think of Christmas much at all yet. This fall has been a challenging one for me. Between teaching a college class for the first time, having friends in crisis, and getting knocked out by sickness twice I have been barely able to keep abreast of deadlines, let alone do any work on my PhD dissertation. Christmas has been the last thing on my mind. However, I taught my last class for the term on Wednesday and then finished grading their last assignment on Friday, which means—finally—my schedule is looking a bit freer. Finally I can start thinking about Christmas… and, oh yeah, my PhD dissertation that really needs to move a bit over the vacation. So, yes, I would put that on my Christmas list: getting some research done. Honestly, this is not as glum as it may seem, as during this hectic term I have been kind of missing my doing my own research.
I do, however, really need to get started doing some Christmas shopping. This year (for the first time ever) I am not going home for Christmas. I am going back home in the spring for a conference anyway, so I decided it just didn’t make sense to go back for Christmas this year. Honestly, I am okay with this. I will miss being home for sure, but the idea of spending my first Christmas in Europe is also a bit exciting. The real problem is that if I am not going home for Christmas, I will need to ship my presents. As in, if I want them to arrive by Christmas I need to send them soon—next week at the latest. And what presents do I have? One present so far in total. Someone needs to get shopping.
So yes—my Christmas list isn’t too long this year. All I want is to find time to relax, buy presents, work on my dissertation, hang out with friends, and possibly write a blog post or two. Oh, and a little snow would be nice too!
–The Little Merskank
Get ready for a post about that life milestone that I’m sure is crowding everyone’s newsfeeds more and more these days, parenthood. I married into a family where kids were already the main event; my husband’s two siblings had two kids a piece when we […]
As 20somethings we’re no strangers to failure, often finding ourselves paralyzed by indecision or blinded by ambition. We cringe daily at what we didn’t do and what we haven’t become, what we said and what we believed and yet, as much as we stumble we […]
So, I don’t have the best relationship with my sister—as in, we haven’t talked in over six months. It pains me that we are not in touch, and I know this is a situation I need to rectify, I just don’t know how.
My sister is 19 years older than me. Technically, she is my half sister, as in she was my dad’s child from his previous marriage before he met my mom. Because of the significant age gap between us, we have never had a completely normal sibling relationship. However, we have always been in touch and fairly close, until a little over a year ago.
The whole situation is wound up in messy family politics that I don’t have the will or energy to explain, but basically, over a year ago, my sister had a big fight with my mom. Now, normally when people fight, they yell and scream a little, but 
ultimately smooth things out—we are family after all. Well, what does my sister do? She up and moves to Costa Rica. (Now, picture an RV filled with cats, driving all the way through the dodgy parts of Mexico and central America).
Now, maybe you think I am making things up. But it’s the truth. So, my sister (along with her husband and six cats) moved to Costa Rica—and I haven’t seen her since. We sent a few emails, but somehow it just dropped off and it’s been… six months.
My sister is one of those people who have difficultly viewing situations from the perspective of others and has a very strong sense of the rightness of their position. This has caused her to become alienated from several other members of my family, not just my mom. I feel so bad—I want to have a relationship with my sister, it’s just so hard right now. It’s hard because I feel this tremendous pressure from her to ‘take her side’, which is something I cannot do. It makes me wary of talking with her, or someday visiting her in Costa Rica, because I know she will try to engage me in having long conversation about my mom and other sensitive issues that I have no desire to discuss with her.
I know that part of the problem is my own deep-seeded fear of conflict. I should just be able to stand up to my sister, tell her I don’t want to talk about it and can’t take her side, but I still love her and want to be in relationship with her. I need to do something—I feel like there is this huge elephant in the room. Especially after six months of not talking I don’t feel like I can just send her a chatty email about my life. There is this huge elephant in the room. I need to do something to face it head on, but I am not sure what to say or how to go about it.
Family relationships can be so confusing!