Down a pound & a half this morning, just from taking a break & heading downtown for yesterday, and eating very little while walking around and looking at stuff.
I should learn something from these days when they happen, shouldn't I?
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Dagmar: Does anyone else never have a day off - not just from work but from all other things like work - cooking, cleaning, etc.?
If I work late a lot at my job, yet still maintain my exercise schedule, and still commute twice weekly into CT, it crowds out the time during the week when I manage to do the housework stuff, and I find my weekends are more joyless. And yes, I wonder then why I'm working so hard when it gets me so little that I value, like time to breathe and think and absorb something fascinating. Then I wonder am I just a wimp, since we're all pretty much sentenced to lives of hard labor -- and there are people who do much nastier jobs than I do, and are paid much less for them. But look, I chose my life and the way I make my living. (That doesn't mean I am completely satisfied with it, though.)
I realize that you're using metaphor, saef; however, words are important, and the way people choose to describe things often reflects a certain reality of outlook. You remember the discussion years ago now about "joyless striving."
IMO for most people in North America the life/work balance is very much tilted towards work - at least it is for me and almost everyone I know. And I don't have kids - I can't imagine how much the workload increases with that.
I find I don't really mind doing the every day tasks most of the time. As long as DH does a share - and he does - they are not "hard labour" but they never end. That IS life - a never ending series of tasks, events, etc. Sometimes I just want to "step out" for a couple of hours and do what I like to do, rather than what I need to do.
I am still trying to get to restorative yoga on a Sunday afternoon for 1 1/2 hours. Haven't made it yet - other stuff keeps getting in the way. But I will get there and I will probably enjoy it so much more because I had to really plan and work to get my "step out" time.
That's what makes leisure time so precious to me - I have to really plan for it and I make sure to enjoy every minute of these hard-won hours.
Hard labor. Hmmm. I used to think celebrities had easy lives. I mean, they don't work, do they? Now as I understand what it is that they do, they do work and they work hard. I don't think they see it as hard labor. I do see their struggles--I mean how difficult it must be to get jobs time and time again. They don't all have the luxury of having full time jobs. Granted they (often) make tons of money, but they all don't.
I don't see what I do as hard labor. Okay, yeah, I have a housekeeper every other week, but that doesn't mean I don't do work around the house. But I don't really see it as hard labor. I have chores that I do EVERY DAY but I don't see it as hard labor but things that must be done.
Work doesn't always seem like hard labor either--just the things that tax my brain because accounting doesn't always go the same direction as my brain. I know it's logical, but sometimes it just defies logic. And things that just don't make sense (like my dealing with UPS tomorrow because a shipment we weighed at 130 pounds and thus didn't meet freight rates they now decide is 200 pounds).
And sometimes I think animals are more work than kids. But then thinking back to when the kids were little, perhaps I'm wrong. I'm faced with next weekend attending a day-long concert with family and friends and wondering how to deal with the animals. Today was easy as we were gone less than 8 hours, but next weekend it'll be 12 or more. Kids would have a baby sitter. I don't have an on-call animal sitter.
We went to the Book of Mormon today. OMG we loved it!
Does anyone else never have a day off - not just from work but from all other things like work - cooking, cleaning, etc.? I tend to find I never seem to get an entire day to just enjoy myself, unless I'm away on vacation in another city.
Dagmar
For the first 7-8 months of each new DS's life, that was my reality. Not just the sleep deprivation, but the nursing. Even if I went out for a few hours, I had to pump in advance. And at work, would have to stop, pump, then resume. Which made me have to work longer to finish up, often at night, while the baby was sleeping. Kids, like dogs, don't take a day off of eating and pooping :>) And they LOVE to wake you up at night, especially if you've just gotten back to sleep after the pager goes off for a question from the hospital. As hard as it is with an 8,12, and 15 year olds plus a 50-hour-a-week job, it's a cakewalk compared to being a research doctor when they were babies.
I weighed in at 137.4 lbs. this morning. My small victory last night was ignoring the plate of shortbread cookies DH set on the coffee table. I had a serving of fresh pineapple and 100 cals of greek yogurt instead.
Held the line at 153 through the weekend. I haven't been able to do that in a long time.
I finally have a job that I enjoy. I remember the Sunday afternoon depression with prior jobs - not fun! Yes, there's a lot of things that need to be done that never actually "finish" (laundry, food prep, dishes, bunny care, houseplants, bills). I don't fully relax, ever, when I'm at home. I try to plan at least a full day away from home about every quarter so that I'm not sitting there thinking about what I could/should be doing. I am getting a lot better at not flipping out when the schedule changes at the last minute, and I am also getting very good as saying, "Nope, can't do it."
DH is in class tonite. I just bought 2 blouses online that will look best with "sorta skinny" jeans so that provides a lot of incentive to not overeat or drink beer tonite or any night. I think the worst of the stress re DH's job is now over (for me) and I can again concentrate on getting life back in order a bit more.
This, from the second article, is very interesting:
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Messenger says the average Briton works 150 fewer hours than an American.
"The difference is really driven by the fact that the US is the only developed country that has no legal or contractual or collective requirement to provide any minimum amount of annual leave," he says.
The UK, in contrast, is subject to the European working time directive, which requires at least four weeks of paid annual leave for every employee.
I have only had paid vacation leave twice (same company 2 years) in my working life (approx 35 years now) and that was for one week the first year and two weeks the second. This was also the only company that gave me any medical or dental benefits.
Now, being self-employed (not by choice) and probably being so for the rest of my life, I get nothing at all. No unemployment insurance, no tax grants, no retirement matching plan, etc. etc. We do get medical aid but that has also become a two-tier system - the wealthy pay and get seen to right away, the rest of us whenever.
It really is "working without a net" for myself and many other Canadians.
