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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 ...

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