I know!!! Taking time off again!!!! What the fluff I hear you cry? Well, actually, I’m taking tomorrow and Thursday daytime relatively off, to hang out with friends and their children. It won’t be sitting around and eating cake though because we’ve got things to do which will also serve me for a work purpose. I can’t separate the two any more. Anyway, that’s a different topic…
But I’m documenting it because a year ago, I sat down in Scotsdales (with cake) and Ann Hawkins and started to look at what there is, that I already do and like doing, and what there is that I do and wanted to change. One of them was to have more work life balance and also, to be comfortable with it. It’s the latter that’s still the difficult aspect for me. I think people and businesses rate and value my work more when they know it’s a full time occupation, rather than a part time one. So I embrace it and make excuses for when I have time off. Like I’m about to in the next paragraph.
Time Off is not really Time Off in my world. The hours I would normally have worked tomorrow, will be covered by my working tonight and then tomorrow – Wednesday, when we get home at 4.30pm I’ll hand the boys on to Lovely Bloke, will grab the tea he will have lovingly prepared, head down to the office and get a good 5, possibly 6 hours of work done. And then I’ll do the same on Thursday. The boys don’t see it, and Lovely Bloke doesn’t mind, because he gets TWO days to himself – to clean, go to the gym, go to Waitrose without people begging for magazines / chocolate treats and whinging at him when they don’t get their own way.
And then on Friday, I’ll work a longer day to compensate for hours missed on Wednesday and Thursday. And of course, I’ll have my phone and laptop with me on Wed & Thurs so I’ll be replying, commenting, sharing and doing my work from them both whilst on the go.
I’m not documenting this for sympathy. I’m just writing it out as it surprises me that I am filing Wednesday and Thursday this week as being “days off” when they truly are not! They are me working alternative hours to the usual 9am – 6pm that I do, that’s all. So, that’s me, putting it out there that when you see men and women saying that they are having “time off” you shouldn’t assume that they are out of reach, not monitoring online platforms or paying attention to what’s developing around them. Because more likely than not, they are in reach, they are monitoring and they are acutely alert to what’s happening out there in the world !
Anyway back to the point. I saw something today that I really liked, on Facebook, so I’m posting it here, because it was a year ago that I started to make a shift in my working arrangements. Hopefully in another year I’ll be in a position to work alternative hours as and when I want to, and not feel the need to justify it to myself or others. That’s the next step, surely?
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