I've been thinking about this phrase "work-life balance". It conjures up for me an image of scales: job on one side, family and fun on the other side. But it's just not that easy. When I look at my Facebook page, I see that more than half of my peeps are also work contacts (i.e. graduates of the school I work for, and thus my responsibility). Maybe a quarter of my social networking activity relates directly, and about half relates indirectly, to my job. I travel quite a bit for my job-- so then are my "free" evenings mine, or am I still at work? When I take someone out for dinner, our conversation veers wildly from the personal to the professional (but never the inappropriate).
At church there are always a handful of folks I work with. I live in housing owned by my employer (dude; it seemed like a good decision at the time). Even going to church -- my main hobby, I guess -- is sort of on a list of stuff I have to do because of my vocation.
I think I probably work too much, but it's hard to measure. I don't think there's ever going to be a set of scales that can balance my work and my life. I'm going to have to judge them by other standards.
I guess there's just not a whole lot of "play" associated with adulthood. It's a long list of responsibilities, really, and I guess our job is to pick the responsibilities we like and get them on the list.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
standards
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2 comments:
hi jess...i've been working on the question of responsibility too. one insight i've come to: there can be joy in choosing to be responsible, and in showing up for what we've chosen. I'm still working on this, but thought it was worth sharing.
I don't think the image of a scale works--at least for us as adults--and maybe especially in our vocations. Do I have a solution or a way to not work too much? No. A toddler helps with trying not to 'work' to much, but also brings more 'work' (like laundry and protecting and, and...)
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