Most of us toiling away at work every day live for moments of downtime – when we’re away from work and can do as we please. My friends and I have dreamed, at one time or another, about what it could be like to not have to work at all. What would it be like to have a full day open to do as much or as little as you’d like?
I used to think that if I could have enough financial comfort to not have to work, I would spend my days doing much of nothing as if compensating for the years of labor. However, there was a time that I took a hiatus from work, and though it was fun for the first couple of weeks or so, I was dreadfully bored after that. It ended up being a waste of valuable resources and I was glad to return to the workforce in some capacity.
I had no Work/Life Balance to speak of during that time, and it was my own fault. Without having to adhere to a schedule of any kind, I had a wealth of time to indulge in writing projects, take classes – anything to honor my craft. Instead, I watched too many movies and played a lot of video games.
Have I mentioned that I’m a gamer? No? Okay, there’ll have to be a post on that later.
But, I digress…I was more about Life than Work at that time. Before then, I was more about Work than Life. Now…I want both on equal terms, and it’s definitely possible to have that and more.
Right now, my days are filled with combinations of working and writing. Having a full-time job sometimes means that I’m a bit too mentally weary to write, but I do my best to push through it because if I don’t, the probability of always having to work for someone else is 100%. Every step I take through this process is meant to chip away at that percentage. I’d like to think that now I might be at about 86%.
I’ve also had to change the way I view things. My work isn’t just what I do for an employer between certain hours, and my life isn’t just about the enjoyable things I do on my time off. Writing is my livelihood. That’s what drives me. That’s why I get up every day – to create, not to toil away making money for someone else (even though I genuinely enjoy my job). I work every day so that I can have the time and ability to take a day off from the “regular” to indulge in the “extraordinary.”
-me.
