Balance. I once read somewhere that those among us who keep striving for work-life balance are the ones who don’t actually WANT balance.
I, however, am in dire, desperate need of balance. I’ve worked 10 straight days in a row and am on track to work at least the next two as well.
Both Carrie and Amber recently blogged about the importance of prioritising. After sleep and work, we only have 72 hours in a week! Add to that commuting, showers, and other equally exciting but necessary tasks…and your free time quickly dwindles.
I need to schedule some ‘me’ time. I’ve just been snatching bits and pieces there – reading on the bus, or before bed, 10 minutes with a face mask, etc.
T is also working again, rather long hours and sometimes Saturday mornings. This leaves us evenings together, and (usually) Saturday and Sunday mornings. No more full days off!
So while my focus right now still needs to be my career and maintaining a stable income so we can live and save – both my FT and side job – here’s how the rest of it looks. Once this project is over, these are my other priorities in order:
* Quality us time
* Taking the time to make sure we eat decently – both dinners and home-made lunches for work
* Quality me time – reading, blogging, playing guitar
* Socialising – I’ve been seeing my old friends a lot more often, but scheduled catchups with uni friends have been postponed for a couple of weeks now.
* Cleaning/laundry/running the household
* Running
* Lazy time.
Now if only I could take a day off to actually put this into action…
I need to practice what I preach more. True story! For example, right now, Eric and I are both sitting on our couch, with our respective laptops on our laps and a movie on in the background. Paying no attention whatsoever to each other but still “spending time together”. I would like more uninterrupted US time ideally!
Too true. Luckily we only have one laptop between the two of us! Too often he’ll just be watching TV and I’ll be doing the dishes or possibly reading in bed next to him. That’s usually how our exhausted weekday evenings go, anyway.
I saw this and Carrie’s post in my reader today and this honestly couldn’t of come at a better time for me. I’m trying to work on my time management skills so I can stay on top of school work but I can’ forget about everything else as well. 🙂