Making Time to Just Chill Out...
It's the weekend!
There was the time in my life when that actually meant something, specifically that I would get to have a couple of days where I didn't have to think about work.
That did change some 25 years ago when a couple of my employers started to have the expectation that I should have my phone available at all times in case they needed something. Or I had to wear a pager. Remember pagers?
These days I'm self-employed, but even so it's hard to find any time to just sit down and do absolutely nothing, at least for more than 30 minutes or an hour at a time.
It occurred to me today that with the way the word world is right now, "time to relax" is not something you can find anymore, it's something you have to make. Time off has to be a conscious decision, it's not something that anybody automatically gets anymore.
And, somehow, we are often assigned to the category of being losers if we're not invested in grinding at work every day of the year.
Not that long ago I was talking to somebody with a corporate tech job and explaining how my cousins in Denmark generally get six to seven weeks of paid vacation every year and that person's commentary was basically that "Europeans are really lazy".
I don't know when we reached this point where we almost have a slightly sick pride in the fact that we spend so many hours at work that we have time for nothing else. The irony of that is actually that we're proud of how many hours we work, far more so than how proud we are of how much work we actually get done.
One of the reasons I never worked out well in the corporate world was because when I went to work I expected to work while most people around me seemed to spend most of their time at work trying to figure out how to not work.
And so they would be at work for 60 hours a week but so many of those hours were spent standing around by the vending machines in the cafeteria talking about last week's episode of some TV show that was popular in the moment.
The actual volume of work completed was definitely not all that impressive.
Frankly, I would rather work intensely at 100% for a much shorter week and have time on my hands to do other stuff. Isn't that what the whole work/life balance thing is supposed to be about?
Thanks for stopping by and have a great Sunday!
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I am getting better at just sitting and reading a book, or doing some needlework, even though there's always something "more productive" I could be doing. A homemaker doesn't really get a day off, nor can she leave her work at the office, because her work is at home. I've been training myself to just ignore some of the things that are screaming at me to get done. And twice a year (at least) I go visit my sister for a few days so I can relax a bit better. I help her with cooking and dishes, but it's still different than at home.
Amen! In my last job, in an incredibly manual factory doing 12 hour shifts, (I am currently not working after serious illness) I was paired up with the young ones, the idea was that my work-ethic would somehow 'drag them along'.
Others would tell them 'go grab a sweeping brush', regardless of if the floor had been swept 12 times or 247 in the previous hour. I have worked in factory settings for decades, the brush is the only 'go to' people have in their arsenal.
I used to say, don't give them a meaningless task that they know means get outta my way, teach them to spot a useful., meaningful task in the work-area. They were always given breaks before me, (not the done thing in that environment) If a stinking drain 'cathpot' needed cleaning out, I would do it, have them observe, so they can literally see the old adage of 'I wouldn't ask you to do...blahblahblah)'
I could get work out of them, but blood...stones and all that jazz...
Abso-bloody-lutely!!!
I had a work-saying, 'he who runs the clock down fastest - wins.' That seldom comes from loitering, hiding, stepping back to let others take over.
Those folks were always the most likely to utter;
This shift is dragging.
My back is killing me.
I'm tired.
It's cold.
Now on this last point, it was a refrigerated area, but I was always sweating... Not through extra weight, I should probably point out 😁
I always thought, I'm getting paid to be here, (no matter how poorly sometimes) I always took pride and put in effort, even to the mundane and unfulfilling.
SORRY! That was not what I intended to get in to when I read the over-arching theme of your post, but you hit one of my 'strong feeling' topics. Which in many ways relates to societal decline, but that's for another day...
I think this is a very silver blogger issue you have raised, the rest one I mean... I do not mean that we are older so should want or take more rest, no not at all. Ironically, it is quite the opposite as I look around today, the young are taking power-naps and recovery days (not all, admittedly, but in general)
There comes a time though for very different reasons that we should allow ourselves to just step away deliberately I like to ponder, learn, spend time with things I could not when raising kids, working hard, never having that spare moment.
It is like the gift we allow ourselves to receive now, because it was simply not available to us before. I appreciate that time immensely, hypocritically, after all I just said, I sometimes forget to do it.
Occasionally, I will go out for a walk, not brisk, not with exercise or fitness in mind, just to breathe out. Trite though this may sound but I will watch a cat running about on the field near my home and not look away, or watch a bird, listen to it and just be there for a few minutes or however long.
It kinda jolts me out of life for a short while, I literally give my entire focus to something natural, unrelated to everything else in my life and just 'be there' for a bit.
That sounded far more Zen than I intended, but I'm sure you get the point (that probably could have been made with 20 words, not 5000 😫)
I would love to think that has meant something to you and yours, over the last couple of days but am unsure if I should hold my breath 😏
A new week beckons, try not to over-do it... Ahhh... Who am I kidding.
Have a great one 😎
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