Unless you live off the land or are independently wealthy, work is probably a central and important part of each week, or even every day. And there is good reason for that, to a degree. We work to gain something. Money, status, power, influence, whatever it is, there is a pay-off for your labor. Those are fine things in themselves. It is important, but I believe we diminish the human experience when we allow work to occupy a bigger piece of real estate than it ought to.
Maybe you're like me and you struggle to separate your identity from your job title sometimes. Or maybe it doesn't really matter what you're doing, as long as you are producing, you're able to believe that you have worth. But the moment that stops, you start lashing out at those closest to you. When was the last time you met someone new and the conversation did not resolve around the subject of work within 5 minutes? Or is it that you rarely ever get to meet new people because your job demands so much of your time? "Full-time" rarely means 40 hours a week anymore.
Sometimes I miss being a waiter at Bob Evans ("down on the farm"). And not just for the open access to biscuits and gravy, the revolving door of management, and the $2.65/hour wage. No, but I do miss working a job that has well-defined parameters and expectations. I'd show up at 4, work until close, and complete the same set of tasks each day. Then I would leave and work would stay. While the stench of stale grease may follow me home, there was no way for the job to infiltrate the rest of my life. Even if I was asked to pick up extra shifts, I could always decline. There is a lot I hated that job, but it had it's benefits.
My current job is the complete opposite. For starters, there are no biscuits and gravy. Ever. How sad indeed. But that's not the only important difference. I am a lawyer and I work in an environment that has an insatiable hunger for my time and tears. My job tries to follow me around like the Cozumel pygmy raccoon--they act all friendly, until you stop giving them your chips and then suddenly you have rabies.
Like so many, my job lends itself to overtime (without overtime pay, of course). I often, like today, receive work emails on Sunday. I almost never have a sense of completion because there are always more cases to read through, more revisions to make, or angles to analyze. It is hard to figure out where the line should be drawn between myself and my job. Frankly, it just isn't modeled well for me. Where do you draw the line in your life?
At the same time, I am trying to heed the building realization that I need to establish appropriate boundaries. When you give your job your everything, it becomes your everything. Yes, you should go hard when the clock is on, but there has to be an off switch. There has to be a life that is secret and separate from your day job. Otherwise you will become utterly uninteresting. I don't care if you get paid to solve the most cutting edge issues, you should be more than your resume.
A few months ago I was talking with a friend about the struggles of balancing it all. Work, kids, marriage, community, hobbies, self-care. It is hard to find the right tension between these different threads. He mentioned how consistently exhausted he is after work and how his son is always begging for psychical play time with him--between soccer, baseball, boxing, and wrestling, this kid could wear out the best of us. That's when it hit me clearer than ever: you're day-job has to be your part-time gig. The work you get paid to do should be subservient to the life you live. Your full-time "occupation" is your community: your spouse, your kids, your friends and family, and yourself.
I am not making the comparison to reduce the significance of intimate time spent with loved ones to something as trivial as an job. I am putting the two, your job and your life, next to each other because so many of us give our job the best of us. We emotionally and physically allot almost all we have to our work. I definitely understand going through seasons where a demanding project or an important transition will require more time and energy than normal. But when that become the normal pattern of your life, you've now just become a full-time employee and stopping living life full time.
Why is that important? Because you have so much more in you. You are worth so much more than what you get paid to do. Your capacity for engagement and joy and passion and creativity are unmatched and missing from your community when you fail to tune in. Oh, and it will kill you to keep going through that miserable routine. Even at 40-50 hours a week, you ought to conceptualize your job as the thing you do part-time. Don't just save a little in your reserves for the rest of living. Keep your good stuff. Keep the best of you for you and your community.
How is your part-time job keeping you from living a full-time life? Let me know in the comments!
Until next time, be blessed.
Sam
Image Sources: Raccoon, Time
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