Work-Work Balance

The thing is, what is life?

There’s a lot of talk about work-life balance. It’s something I have struggled with for about twenty-three years now. Half of my life. I joke that I’m a recovering workaholic, but after a decade, that starts to feel a bit stale to me, and I’m certain to others, as well. I work. And that’s pretty much it. If I am not working, I feel guilty. Well, or I am too exhausted or sick to work, and then as soon as I start to recover I get really twitchy because I need to be working.

I write these essays for a couple of reasons. One, they are work for me, and I really do have a need to work. Two, I’ve been journaling publicly in blog form for nearly twenty years, so this feels very familiar and comforting - putting my thoughts down in a jumbled mess, so I can work at sorting them into some kind of order. Difficult, in a life filled with constant interruptions and tugging on my concentration in all sorts of directions. Finally, I keep thinking that perhaps a reader will be able to find something useful in my experiences and mistakes, that will help them avoid making similar ones for themselves. That last, more than anything, keeps me doing this here and on the blog.

The more complex underlying motivations beneath my unending drive to work, to be useful and a productive member of a society that barely acknowledges me, let alone values my contributions, likely extends back to childhood. No, I’m not getting Freudian here. Good gad… If I do that, someone please Gibbs-smack me.

I was raised with an old-fashioned work ethic, and to be responsible. As the eldest child in a family with a father who was often forced to travel far away for work, and a mother with serious physical problems, I had to be responsible early and often. I don’t think of myself as being a particularly hard worker, though. I did what had to be done, and sometimes adults outside the family took me to task for not doing more, so I stepped up as much as I knew how to do what I could.

When I was a very young mother, I realized that the only way to keep my children fed was to make certain of it myself. That was a long, nightmarish period of desperation with few skills, no degree, and no transportation (even were I allowed) to find something outside the home. Running a business from home turned into a way forward, and because it was so vital, and the money so poorly managed when it did start to come in, I poured myself into it day and night. There were many times I did without sleep for nights on end, making sure what was necessary was done. I drove myself past my limits, over and over, stretching to the breaking point. It was the only way. It was never enough.

Once you’ve done that for more than a decade, there’s no going back. I don’t think that it’s about learning how to shrink, so much as it is not knowing what to do with yourself. I don’t know how to relax. That’s not me talking, friends and even my husband have told me this, urging me to figure it out, so I don’t continue to damage myself.

I’m an engine that can’t be shut off. I don’t know how, and deep down I’m terrified that if I do find the '‘off’ switch, I won’t ever be able to start back up. Stopping isn’t an option. I’m the sole provider, again, for my family. There are bills to pay, a roof to keep over our heads, and food to put on the table. I’d like to someday be able to not have to drive on so hard, but what other choices do I have?

All of that, plus looking to the future, and wanting to be prepared for emergencies, means I work. Now, not all the work I’m doing is pointed at income. Sometimes I’m working for what I want, which is why I have been so focused on the gardens recently. If I can spend some time with my hands in the dirt, I feel whole for a little while, and I know from years of experience that I need to garden in some way, or it’s just wrong. That’s work I do for my own mental health, as much as it is a way to work on my physical health giving me exercise and sun exposure to replenish Vitamin D and the other bioenzymes that sunshine offers the human organism. Body and soul fed by the garden.

The day job is the way to keep the body and soul together, through food and shelter. It also helps me feel secure and stable. One thing about having learned over and over I can’t rely on anyone but myself? Self-reliance becomes competence perforce. When you have no other options, you learn to be content where you are, and to make it work. Finding that work-work balance that keeps you moving forward, upright and intact.

What is life? it’s that period of time between birth and death. We get up every morning with the vast blankness of a day stretching out in front of us. Without something that matters to fill that day, what’s the point? Life is for doing. What’s that mean? Well, that’s up to you. Life has a purpose, but my purpose is not your purpose and it’s not her purpose over there, or his off yonder, either. You’ll have to make meaning of your life on your own.

Thing is, making a difference doesn’t have to be some big world-saving thing. Be kind to one another. Support each other’s endeavours - but also be courageous enough to speak when someone is harming themselves or others. One of the topics I’ve explored in fiction is small stories. Particularly when writing SF and Fantasy, it’s easy to fall into the trap of ‘save the world, save the universe…’ because our own lives seem so small and insignificant to our own eyes. I like to write smaller stories, the gears that mesh together in a communal effort to drive that world-saving forward. Because it is something that I think we all have the capacity to do. To make a difference in our lives, through our words, our art, our children, and our influence. We all matter. Every one of us has value. We express that through our work - which is not the same thing as a job - and the fruits borne out show that our labor is not in vain.

I’m looking for a better work-work balance. That’s my life.

(All images by Cedar Sanderson, rendered with MidJourney)