The Side Effects of Endorphins

How do you balance work and home life?

I hope this blog finds you well, as I’ll probably go off on a tangent here. Here I sit on a Monday morning I’m no longer in the workforce, but still there was a time not long ago where I marched off to work every Monday.

Idioms

• I got a case of a Mondays
• It’s another manic Monday
• Fueled by coffee

But Friday, I’m in love.

These are idioms we accept with humor and charm. But they are really are reflections of our capitalistic society. Raising a family and surviving work life in the United States is a grind. It is not easy to balance work and your personal life. My mantra always has been work to live and not live to work.

There is a certain irony in that as well. Given little time to enjoy your leisure, your leisure is less enjoyed as there are insecurities with the work you do to provide for your leisure. unless you have a secure job, they’re always low level angst. So one strategy I did have is to find those jobs with low stress. I was lucky I was in a field that paid well and I could be somewhat picky that way. Still there’s no fooling the capitalistic system.

Statistics Are Like Bikinis

Iran holds the highest paid time away from work with roughly 53 paid days off (26 days paid leave + 27 public holidays). No wonder our regime is bombing the shit out of them. I apologize in advance for this swearword here with a bit of a misplaced tangent. I’m reading a book of the top 2000 expressions in German.. Scheiss comes in at number 273. Germans use the word often and they get plenty of vacation..

Problem solved

Move to Europe, as our children live in Germany . They have ample time off and maternal leave generous for the mother as well as the partner. This makes so much sense.. No the capitalistic system in the United States is not the best system in the world. It’s not even close. But we are bombing the hell out of Iran with their 53 days of vacation.. please excuse me for swearing as that happens to me when I talk about capitalism.

A Glimmer of Hope

Jimmy he owns the Firestone or maybe it’s a Good Year tire place in Western Washington he inherited from his family.. He works six days a week and hasn’t taken a vacation for years. He falls asleep on the couch as his grandchildren play. He has a big house, a riding tractor, and nice patio furniture. He likes it that way, and would not have it any other way. Pull up your boot straps and work. Maybe having patriotic love for the capitalistic system is a balance of work life all its own. It is not mine.

It’s another manic Monday.

Consumer

I was sitting in the parking lot in the U district in Seattle the other day, watching people on their Saturday morning. That’s the beginning of the weekend for most. People were shopping and buying stuff and filling the economy.. That is not exactly my cup of tea. But with more leisure comes more time for consuming.

New Beginnings

My wife is a school teacher now a principal starting a new job along the Puget Sound. She met with the new staff and she said she hoped that there’s going to be a great work life balance. Are we as humans now trained to work 56 hour weeks. Or is that in United States?

We shall see how that plays out.

Cliche

We always see that age old axiom. It usually stated something similar to when we are nearing the end of life, we never sit back and reflect hoping we worked more hours and stayed at the office longer. It is kind of cliché, but there may never be a sentence more true..

Seize the day.