‘Thoughts on August
I like August. Things slow down, and I can find some time to just breathe. With the rest of the year being so busy, it got me thinking, August is 1/12 of a year…work-life balance means I would feel this way and have this workload six months of the year, but that isn’t possible…not yet at least.
Full disclosure, I don’t believe in work-life balance (I actually think it’s a pile of crap that women were sold in the 80s) because when it is at rest, a teeter-totter sits in the ground – one end touching the dirt and the other end reaching for the sky.
My cousins and I often reminisce (fondly?) about the ‘merry-go-round of death’ at the park near our Nana’s house. The late 70’s in Northern England were not the bastion of playground safety that they are now and this particular piece of playground equipment was capable of enough centrifugal force to give NASA a run for its money. It would regularly launch kids into space only to land on hard cement, sometimes missing the broken beer bottles and dog crap that littered the ground. (I still have a scar on my knee from one such encounter). I must admit that over the last two and half years, things have often felt more like holding on for dear life to the metal railing of a rickety merry-go-round than gently bobbing up and down on a teeter-totter.
So if it isn’t a teeter-totter or a Thatcher-era instrument of torture, what the heck is it?
A dear friend and colleague questioned whether work-life balance is just another word for control. ‘Can I control this scenario or outcome?’ When I can, I’m in balance and when I can’t I’m out of balance – that rang true for me. There was a lot about the last two years I couldn’t control and that makes me uneasy.
Another brilliant colleague refers to it as ‘work-life integration’ which, thanks to years in high-tech, I know means a ‘handshake between systems’. Sometimes home is the priority and sometimes work is the priority, not usually balanced but hopefully equal over time. I very much like the imagery of a handshake – a personal agreement that benefits both.
After a few fabulous conversations, I’ve been able to release the idea of balance. I now feel like I’m better able to run toward the playground as we move into the new (school) year. September 1st has always to me felt more like a new beginning than January 1st, so I’m going to move forward in the spirit of the handshake, firm, committed, not at all ‘squishy-fingered’ (we were actually taught how to shake hands back in college and squishy-fingered was almost as bad as super-sweaty) and looking the coming months straight in the eye and smiling. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.
Given all you have on your plate, how do you want to approach September?