Mid life crisis? Or just a case of seeing a horizon filled with the wrong type of work

Work-life balance - an odd expression, especially when you have run up against an iron railing of a work-life balance-dilemma. With railings you generally have two choices - pass through them if there is a gate, or if you are thin enough (!!!!! NY resolution is at risk of becoming a February resolution) and the space between the railings is wide enough to accommodate you, or climb over them. There is however a third option - you can pause, sit, put down roots, procrastinate and stop; this equals inertia and is not a happy place to be. You can't go backwards because that is the past and history cannot be rewritten, but something is preventing you from making progress. I can give many names to that something - it is indecision, fear, uncertainty, endless excuses - washing up, ironing, walking the dog, shopping, drinking coffee, lacking confidence, and putting everyone but yourself first. You know that the future lies beyond the railings, but you can't see how to get there - you can probably see exactly how to help everyone else get through their own personal sets of railings, but you just seem incapable of doing it for yourself. And you dither - for weeks! Getting nowhere fast.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that faced with decisions about work - which actually feel more like decisions about work, life, the universe and everything - I .... well, you know what I do - I'm doing it now. I didn't declare myself a pretty good procrastinator a few blogs back for nothing!

Perhaps this is a mid-life crisis - the big what next moment. But why call it a work - life balance? To balance two things is to establish an equilibrium between them, the two things are different but equal - work-life balance therefore implies that work and life are separate and that work is not part of life. So when I feel dead at work, perhaps I am!

Mmmm - solution? The usual ... eat chocolate! And procrastinate a bit more.

... so, these February Resolutions ...

Comments

Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

Yes - it is a real word. Flochetage. Well, a real-ish word. One invented by the painter Delacroix, when he found the dictionary cupboard bare and required a word to describe his technique of layering different coloured paints, using lightly pulled brush strokes to create texture and pattern and thereby enhance his base-layer colours (... lost? - stick around, read on and all will become clear. Or perhaps muddier ...). Flochetage implies both stringiness and threadiness. Apparently. And it sounds good - in a filling-the-mouth-with-sound sort of a way. Try it ... flochetaaaage. Not that I speak French. So I am probably mis-pronouncing it. Nor am I an artist. So what do I know about painting techniques - except that I think this one works. What I do like is the concept - you invent a new technique in whatever it is you do, hunt around for the vocabulary to describe it, find the dictionary is lacking, so make up a word of your own and announce to the world what it means. Delacroix isn...

My beloved boy, how lucky I have been

It's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die ... and I say someone here even though the one in question was a dog - but to us he had character and a place forever in our hearts and was more of a familiar someone than some of the people in our lives. So, I'll start again - it's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die, our senses go into overdrive. We notice things that normally would be part of the background of our every day. We breathe more - or rather, we don't but what we do is notice our breathing more, as we watch his. We pause. We think. We listen to ourselves and our inner voices speak. Memories flood our dreams ... though sleep is fitful. Why am I telling you this? ... ... we lost this beautiful boy today And in the hours before he went, I saw perfect spheres of dew on blades of grass - little orbs holding micro-images of our world; a bumble bee drunk on nectar, yellow-dusted with pollen, resting in a crocus; ten - yes, ten! ...

Bollockworts

Ah, spelling! Or more accurately mis-spelling. And in particular, my near mis-spelling of the title above. As AA Milne said with the voice of Pooh, or Piglet, or maybe wOl, 'My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.' He went on to say that 'spelling isn't everything.' But ... Mark Twain said that 'anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word lacks imagination.' But ... hmm ... Unfortunately, I can think of two ways to spell the title of this blog - the homonym for wort would create a major Wobble and would turn an innocent blog about plants - yes; plants ... you have the homonym in your head, don't you? ... to something entirely different; unpleasant skin eruptions in unspeakable places. All entirely ... still stuck in your mind? ... yes, entirely unintended. Yes, un-in-ten-ded. Absolutely. Not a w- a -rt in sight. Bollocks on the other hand. You didn't see that comin...

Walking The Dog

Search This Blog