I remember growing up and my dad or his friends would sometimes have to go work late at night. Sometimes they would bring us along to help. Maybe it was plowing snow, maybe the cows got out of the fence at one of our neighbors, or something else. It was normal then, we were not usually excited but it was part of life. I reached a point in my adult life, where I try to not do this. I wanted to go home and my afternoons be mine and Sam’s. We may work at home but at least we are at home together.
When I started my assisted living company, my partner Ryan and I took turns being on call for the first 3 and a half years. We would have to go solve issues in the middle of the night if we got called. For whatever reason, this ended up getting to me. I would dread getting those calls when I was on call. Thankfully we put people in place, that negated those calls quite a bit. This stage is where I started dreading being called at night or having to go help outside of working hours.
I got to thinking though, doing these things, is part of life. Sometimes you have to work late into the night. Sometimes you will be done with work and you may have to go back to work or go help somebody with something. It is part of life, part of work, and part of being a friend.
So, I am trying to change my perspective on sometimes working late or helping someone out in the afternoon or evening if they need it. So, last week Kyle was out of work for 3 days because his daughter was sick. So, I worked late 4 out of the 5 days to help keep projects moving along. When my mom or Kyles wife was done with work, he could come join me on a job, so we could keep it progressing.
It helped me realize, life is not about balance everyday. I think I tried so hard to balance out my day. Like I need to go home and spend time with Sam and Mimi everyday. When in reality I do not. We prefer spending afternoons together and the majority of time, we do. However, it is not a necessity to do so, to have a balanced life. There is no such thing as a balanced life. The balance of life is, you do things in order to do other things. Sometimes you have to do things for a long time, for long hours, at inopportune hours, in order to spend your time doing something else. Let me give you an example of what I mean.
Life should not be about going to work from 8am-5pm then spending the afternoon with your family. Maybe working 1 weekend day and relaxing on one weekend day. A real life, a life where you do not hold back, would realistically look something like this. You had to work your 8am-5pm but you want to take a week trip to Hawaii. So, you sacrifice, you come home from work in the evening and you pick 3 or 4 nights that week where you work late at home. You then choose to work both weekend days. You do this for a couple weeks to get ahead, to the point that a week trip in Hawaii will not affect you. You are not worrying about work while you are on this trip. You are not worried about paying bills while on this trip. You balanced out your life. You put in the extra work to prep for your week off. That is better balance to me, then making sure you are home every afternoon and relaxing on the weekends.
I will do more blogs on balance. There is balance at an even higher level than this, which I will explain in later posts.
Forget the typical “balanced life,” do what you need to do to enjoy the life you want to enjoy.
Your life Tutor
-Shaun Tutor
Tutors of Life 