Something Better Than Work-Life Balance
Finding the swirl
It’s 12:55 in the office lunchroom and there’s no worse place to be.
You’ve eaten your not-very-inspiring lunch. You’ve run out of things to say to the casual acquaintances around you. There’s nothing good left to read because someone stole the best sections of the weekend newspaper and brought them home (ok, that was me).
All that’s left is to go back to your desk in that brown room for the rest of the afternoon and just keep being there.
This was me before COVID. We all know what happened next — an escape from the brown room for an indefinite amount of time, paired with the chaos of learning to work from home while also managing a family in that home.
A few months into lockdown, I had this revealing moment. Like a lot of people, I was recalibrating. Considering my life and whether my choices made any sense anymore. I suddenly saw my world like it was a little 3D model. There was our apartment building, with the grassy courtyard in the middle where we all tried to keep our kids busy and happy. And there was my office, just six blocks away, where I had spent so many thousands of hours. (Thousands! Yikes.) And I saw everything else on the map flattened and faded to grey. Those two things were all I had at that moment (that very long moment).
Was it ok with me that half of my world was that brown place? And was it really even brown or just overwhelmingly brown-feeling?
(This is the part where I feel like I have to say it wasn’t all bad, and I was happy there for a lot of those years, and really the work was interesting, and I was treated fairly well. Though just saying all that is giving me my-boyfriend-isn’t-that-bad vibes.)
In the tiny moments of spare time that I had — usually at midnight — I would try to figure out how to make a change. What did I really want to be doing? What was missing now and how would I look for these elusive qualities in a new workplace? Is it ridiculous to make a change now, of all times?
Even without knowing those answers, I knew it was time to go.
“To change one’s life: Start immediately, do it flamboyantly, no exceptions.”
– William James
It’s not an on/off switch
We’re used to thinking of our jobs as a defining part of our identity. This has never sat well with me, probably because I spent most of my adult life trying to find a job that felt like me.
And then we layer on the concept of work-life balance — splitting our waking hours between working and having a life. The first problem here is considering work and life as two separate things. Because life is part of work — you’re not not there during the work time. It implies we’re supposed to squash down our real selves and just be workers, people who fit into a mold and do what’s expected. But where’s the aliveness?
The second problem with the idea of work-life balance is that work doesn’t stay on its own side of the fence. It spills over into life, like when work thoughts go round and round in our heads during our “free” time. It’s never in balance.
“If work intrudes on your family life – on your non-work time – why shouldn’t the opposite be OK?” – Ioana Lupu
There had to be a different way of thinking about it besides this on/off switch. Work on, person off. Work off, person on.
One day, I was down an online rabbit hole of smart-article-leading-to-more-smart-articles and I came across an idea that felt just right:
Work, love and self-understanding1
Three things that aren’t separate and all intertwine to make up a life. A big colourful2 swirl, not individual pieces of a pie.
The delicious swirl of work and love and self-understanding
Notice that none of them are called life.
Work… our jobs and all the kinds of unpaid labour we do in our families and our communities.
Love… our friendships, our families, our interests, our drive to do work that matters to us.
And self-understanding… how we choose all those kinds of working and loving, if we’re lucky and if we have the bandwidth to pay attention and actually choose, instead of sliding along like I had been.
My colourful swirl
I’ve been on a bit of a self-understanding kick lately, so it’s interesting to use my 2024 brain to think back on that time of change in 2020.
Once all the noise of life had quieted, I’d noticed the values misalignment of my day-to-day world. It took me a while to figure out what to do about it and to find the nerve (and energy) to make a change.
I wanted to bring my human self to work with me every day. And at the same time, I wanted my job to matter less in my life.
I wanted to be surrounded by people who knew things I didn’t and who understood the value of slowing down, being thoughtful and making time for connection.
I wanted a life where things I knew about myself — like my love of progress, discovery and change — could be woven into my day.
How I found the exactly right job is a story for another day. But I did find it. And it started with understanding myself and how I wanted to feel. My new work — and the love and self-understanding that are a big part of it — is a colourful swirl. No brown here.
I occasionally still get that 12:55 feeling. And I get past it by taking a walk in the afternoon sun. No one is counting the minutes my butt is in my chair, because they recognize that I’m a human who needs to fill themself up to be able to keep giving. I’m supported to make choices that work for my life — my whole life and my whole self.
And that 3D model of work and home where everything else was grey? It’s become a messy, happy, tangly world of colour.
These Are Nice For Us
A little inspiration: “When you use writing to pass what’s in your mind and heart to someone else’s mind and heart, that’s amazing. It’s magic as far as I’m concerned. When you carve meaning out of this chaotic cacophony of life, I applaud you. When you dare to be seen in your own writing, to be seen by you or someone else, what you believe, what you know, what you’ve experienced, that’s glorious. When you offer a hand made of words to another person or yourself, a hand that says, ‘Take this, use what you need. You are not alone,’ that’s making a miracle.” – Jennifer Louden
A new low or a winning life hack?: I let my daughter have the last bit of milk for her cereal this morning and then when she didn’t eat it all, I poured the cereal-y milk from her bowl into my coffee to avoid having to go to the store.
This:
Wondering where the newsletter name comes from?
It was my friend’s birthday. We were having dinner at a fancy-but-not-too-fancy restaurant. I brought gifts and sprinkled little sparkly confetti all over the table. We were sipping wine and telling funny stories, and she looked at me and said, “This is nice for us.” I replied, “It is nice for us.” Now we just say it anytime that feeling pops up — comfort and fun and connection. Nice for us.
A special thanks to my new subscribers who joined this week. Welcome! I hope it’s nice for you.
I can’t find this online anymore, so if you know who said it, please let me know in the comments!
I’m Canadian. We put a “u” in words like colour and neighbour.
This is freaking brilliant Holly. I've never thought of how work/life balance is framed, as if work is one thing and then actual life exists in some alternate plane of existence. Kind of mind blowing actually, how we're taught to suit up for the work part of our life and then shed that part when we go out into the rest of the world. Blending it all together into a swirl that actually honors our humanity feels so much more realistic and true. My life lately feels like so much more of a swirl, but I love the idea of actually monitoring those three parts--work, love, and self understanding--to make sure there's enough of everything mixed in.
Love all of this, Holly. I am seeking something similar. I have been out of the brown room for a long time, but am currently looking for that perfect balance of purpose, curiosity, and thoughtfulness of which you speak (and that seems elusive in middle age). I'd love to hear the second story of how you found it! Also, cereal milk is a total life hack. Well done.