Learning the Value of a Second, or How I Learned to Balance Work-Home Life

Growing up in the late nineties and early aughts to divorced, working class parents, I quickly learned just how important money was when it came to the quality of one's lifestyle. As a child, these kinds of things just sort of fly over your head - but the value of a dollar was an important factor in my upbringing and growth as a person.

I have a memory in my early childhood of my father knelt before me, attempting to help me extract a loose tooth. I remember both he and my mother's ginger reassurances to me that, despite the pain, there would be some benefit to yanking my tooth before it naturally fell out.  "The tooth fairy will come, aren't you excited? You'll get a dollar," they coaxed me, "and think of all the things you can buy with a dollar!" At the time all I could think of was Hubba Bubba's Bubble Tape (do they even still make that?), and sure enough later that day I traded in my little tooth for compensation in the form of sweet, long gum. 

"No pain, no gain" is a mindset that is  ingrained into many American children early on this way: without some sacrifice you'll remain unhappy, and worse yet - poor. Upon entering the workforce some ten to twelve years ago, I found out just how much sacrifice a person has to make to avoid the creeping death that is the poverty line. Of those sacrifices, the most precious lamb of all sits highest on the chopping block: time.

You have, give or take, about seventy years on this Earth. You'll spend about a third of it sleeping (highway robbery - but that's a point for another ramble). With some luck you'll only spend another third at work - though many people today have to spend much more than that to make ends meet. "Kids these days," I've heard old-timers say, "don't want to work! They're so lazy!"

What these old-timers fail to see is this: it has become increasingly apparent what happens to those people that wholeheartedly give their lives over to corporations that see them as expendable fodder. Firsthand I have witnessed these people, having worked at the same factory for forty years, with broken bodies and numb spirits. They are discarded, thrown away discreetly as soon as they stop being profitable to the company they work for. 

Can these people truly shoulder all of the blame, though? They were taught that working long, hard hours would give them upward mobility - someone would notice, surely, that they were going above and beyond! I'd like to tell you a little secret: going above and beyond nowadays only sets a precedent for your future goals. If you give one hundred percent you'll be expected to give that every day - you've shown you can do it, so you can keep it up all the time, can't you?

You can't. You'll burn out, mind frizzled and body broken by the age of forty. By retirement age you will be a husk of a human - fit only to collect whatever financial net society has put up for you (ha).

My answer to this problem: when it comes to your work life, do what you need to in order to survive. Nothing more. Corporations will lie to your face and tell you that they care about you - they don't. Unless you were lucky enough to be born knowing the right people, you will never be a millionaire CEO. Find out what you can comfortably live on and fight tooth and nail to get to that point. Get educated. Work on practical skills. Find things you enjoy outside of work, and work to live - not the other way around. 

As an addendum: doing the bare minimum at work doesn't mean you have to do the bare minimum in life. There is a lot of joy to be found striving for perfection. Pride in a job well done is a great feeling. Just be sure to expend your energy and your most precious resource - time - on the things you enjoy in life. 

Of course, this is all my opinion. If you read my whole essay here, thank you. Let me know what you think, I'm always open to conversation. I'm going to try to do more like this in the future when I feel up to it.

-K