Sunday, June 10, 2018
You're right, it's work-life balance. I failed. Now that we have that out of the way, I would like to discuss what I mean by work-life-hobby balance. When I thought about this blog post, I don't exactly remember what I was thinking at the time, because a hobby would be considered part of the life portion.
Then you I would say your work-life balance is tilting more towards your work. This is not a good or bad thing, it's a just a thing. People fluctuate all the time, so it's really what you want at the moment or what you're striving for, because let's be realistic, we can't necessarily control the balance in our lives all the time. Sometimes, we just have to go with the flow. It's like a teeter-totter (or seesaw), remember those?
I mention work-life-hobby balance, because I've never really set aside dedicated time to pursue my hobbies. This is one of them. I enjoy doing this. I enjoy saying these words as I'm typing them, believing that you'll hear my voice as you're reading these words. It's just like in the movies when a character reads a letter from another character. Of course, you wouldn't hear my voice, unless you actually heard how I sound. And, if that's the case, you would make up how I sound. If you heard my voice later on, you would most likely be surprised and/or disappointed. How do I know this? Because, that's exactly how I felt when I was finally able to put a voice to words of people whose articles I read.
But, I digress. When I say work-life-hobby balance, I mean to say that I'm adding hobby to the balance. I'm making an executive decision in my life, that it's important to pursue hobbies, like blogging (or communicating as I like to think of it). Although, this is just one hobby. The balance part is the most important part. I'm setting aside time and trying to stick to it and not go over it, because that can eat into the life portion and I don't want to go there. When I say life, I mean family and friends. I wish I could spend some more time with them, but of course, it's a balance. I believe if I'm mindful of this balance, I will get better at keeping everything balanced.
In a very rigid (and nerdy) way. I'm currently logging how much time I'm spending writing this blog in an excel spreadsheet. I'm doing this mainly for the purpose of knowing when I actually spent time on myself. I don't want to think, "Hmmm, I remember I wrote that blog post last week and it took me about 15 minutes." When in reality I wrote it 5 years ago and it took me a month. I want to avoid that scenario by knowing exactly how much time I spend on something. I'm reminded of the Chinese proverb, "The faintest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory." I believe that. For me, keeping records of things that I seldomly do and want to do more consistently, makes sense.
Work has always been there with life. The hobby portion is new and hobbies can enhance the work portion indirectly in ways we may not be able to see at the moment, and that's a very cool idea. I consider this the official beginning of adding hobbies to my work-life balance to make it a work-life-hobby balance. This is exciting for me, so expect to me to post at least every Sunday. Starting today.