{"id":1795,"date":"2009-03-03T09:27:22","date_gmt":"2009-03-03T14:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=1795"},"modified":"2009-03-03T10:24:29","modified_gmt":"2009-03-03T15:24:29","slug":"its-all-about-balance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2009\/03\/03\/its-all-about-balance\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s all about balance"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a full month since I’ve been back at work, and we’ve settled into a comfortable routine that seems to be working out well for everyone. I think that this four-day week thing was a brilliant choice, and I’m so happy we were able to make it work. It’s made a huge difference in my feeling of connection to the boys’ daily lives and my ability to balance working with mothering. Three cheers for balance!<\/p>\n

Five things I love about being back at work:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Unencumbered freedom. I can get up and go for a coffee or a chat with a colleague whenever I want, stop in to shops and wander aimlessly on my lunch break, and nobody wants to crawl into my lap when I’m trying to go to the bathroom.<\/li>\n
  2. Hot coffee. At home, coffee inevitably gets cold before I get half way through because I’m distracted by a hundred other things. At work, I often finish a cup while it’s still warm. Bliss!<\/li>\n
  3. Grown-up clothes. Shoes that go “click-click” when you walk, make-up, and clothes that you need to iron and hang to dry or (gasp!) dry clean: all things I had more or less forgotten about in the last year!<\/li>\n
  4. Being downtown. I love this city, and I love where my office is located. Coming downtown every day makes me feel connected to the city and the people in it in a way that I don’t feel out in the suburbs. And being able to leave it here every day and go home to those same suburbs is equally delightful. <\/li>\n
  5. They’re getting along fine without me at home. Having a great nanny and not having to worry about what’s going on in my absence makes everything easier. (Wasn’t sure whether this belongs in this section or the next!)<\/li>\n
  6. Okay, one more: using my brain for something other than finding the lost TV remote or calculating the nutritional value of pop tarts. (Although, that also sometimes belongs in the next section, because the mom-brain is getting to me lately and I wonder some days if I have enough brain cells left to actually do this job!)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Five things I hate about being back at work:<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Commuting. The buses are still farked up, running inconsistently and ridiculously overcrowded. I’ve had to stand the entire way downtown every morning and the afternoon bus is so crowded I almost missed my stop yesterday because I couldn’t work my way through the crush to get to the door. All this joy for the ridiculous price of $101 per month.<\/li>\n
    2. It’s lonely. Odd, considering I see a hundredfold more people each day while downtown than I do on an average day at home, but even in a crowd I am by myself. Most of my day is spent in crowded solitude or working quietly at my computer. <\/li>\n
    3. Sitting all day. I’m so used to moving all day long, chasing the baby and putting on laundry and picking up toys and walking back and forth to the school two or three times a day that just sitting here for hours at a time – while relaxing at first – makes me kind of twitchy!<\/li>\n
    4. Trying to get a full day of domestic stuff done in four hours. By the time I get home, make dinner, feed\/eat dinner, tidy up daily disaster, get lunches and bags ready for next day, put out clothes for next day, give various boys baths and get pyjamas ready, it’s almost my bed time. Doesn’t leave much time for fun with anyone, either.<\/li>\n
    5. I miss the kids during the day. Sigh.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      I had a much easier time coming up with the five things I don’t like than the five things I do like about working. Matter of fact, I could have extended the “don’t like” list by another five or ten items without much thought! But, all in all, I think it’s working out fine and I’m grateful that we’re on the path to that elusive but oh so important balance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      It’s been a full month since I’ve been back at work, and we’ve settled into a comfortable routine that seems to be working out well for everyone. I think that this four-day week thing was a brilliant choice, and I’m so happy we were able to make it work. It’s made a huge difference in … Continue reading “It’s all about balance”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-working-and-mothering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1795"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1799,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795\/revisions\/1799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}