Reading 03: Try having a few things
I think that having it all really means the ability to devote time and energy to all the areas you want and need to. “It all” is obviously going to look different to a person that wants a big family, a person that wants to see the world, and a person that maybe wants to pursue fame. The question of whether or not “having it all” is possible is remarkably difficult to answer because “it all” is subjective. For my older brother who wants to be a fireman and have a family and coach his future kids’ sports teams in a small, laid back town, I think it is definitely possible to have it all. If he told me he wanted to run a billion dollar company and coach his kids’ sports teams and train for a marathon and make it out to every ND football game I’d be more skeptical. For me, I think I want a good career, but I have no desperate need for an iconic career. I want a big family and I want to be able to teach my kids how to play hockey. I want to stay active and I want to be able to see my parents and brothers a lot.
I think that similar to most people, I draw my perception of what a normal work-life balance is from my parents and family friends . I grew up in a pretty Type A suburb of NYC so a great deal of my friends parents worked insane hours and were never around. My parents were definitely more laid back (my mom grew up in northern California and has had a hippie-esque attitude towards most of life) but even they got caught on the “treadmill” from time to time.
Having had only one summer’s worth of real work experience, I think it is hard to say I have had much time having to deal with work-life balance. I have however, definitely dealt with burnout and guilt over missing out on some portion of my life. I went to a pretty academically competitive high school about a half hour or 45 minutes away from my house. Every morning I would leave my house at 6:45 in an attempt to beat the rush hour traffic. I went to class and then I played a sport every season so I would go straight to a two hour volleyball, track or whatever sport it was at the time practice. In addition to my high school sports I played on a Women’s Juniors hockey team that practice Monday-Thursday. After my school sport I would drive 45 minutes to the rink where we had an hour and a half of lift and then an hour of on ice training. I generally got home at 11 PM after my family had gone to sleep, ate whatever leftover dinner there was, and started on my homework. The juniors team had an extensive schedule that meant most Fridays after school I went straight to the rink where I got on the team bus and went to Boston for that weekend’s tournament. There were times where I would go a full week without seeing my parents or brothers awake. It got to the point where I was sending my mom daily emails to keep her updated on what was going on in my life.
A few months into senior year I was very much burnt out. I never had time to spend with my family, I had virtually no social life, and I was doing all of my college applications in the back of a rowdy bus somewhere between NJ and Boston. I am the singular girl on that hockey team that didn’t go on to play college hockey at a D1 or D3 level (club sports are really where it’s at). Playing in college had been a dream of mine for a long time but I realized that if I wanted to make the commitment to my education that I wanted, if I wanted to try new things, pursue interests outside of sports, and have any social life at all, I couldn’t continue at that pace.
I think it is really hard for people to step back from things. There is an inherent pleasure in being the best at whatever it is that you do. Being the best often requires you to work longer and harder than everyone else around you. Once you put all of that effort in, it becomes nearly impossible to put in anything less than that level. I thought Brad Stulberg’s quote “The more you put in, the harder it is to get out” was very interesting because it points out why people are so hesitant to give up their position even when something else important comes along in life. It is, however, possible as demonstrated by the CEO of MongoDB and Anne-Marie Slaughter in their decisions to take a less time consuming role in order to spend more time with family.
I don’t think that it is possible for parents to “have it all” in the traditional sense of having a high-powered job in addition to a great family life given today’s work climate. It is nearly impossible to find a balance with other interests when you have companies like Amazon who’s “culture stoked their willingness to erode work-life boundaries, castigate themselves for shortcomings … and try to impress a company that can often feel like an insatiable taskmaster.” If companies continue to use their employees as more of a means to an end than anything else, it is going to be impossible for the workforce to spend meaningful time outside of the office. As Anne-Marie Slaughter mentions in her article, I think that this doesn’t have to always be the case but a lot of the social and work norms are going to need to change in order to make space for people with a life outside of their job.
I think that balance is definitely something that I will prioritize in my life and I think that one of the only ways to do that is to consistently remember that work is not life and there are more important things than a job.