Can you give me some advice on how to achieve life balance she wrote ? I sat and looked at the email on the screen, the cursor blinking I drummed my fingers thinking the right way to answer because I didn’t know how to answer it correctly because I had only just sort of worked it out myself by accident really.
FIFO husband and I have been working together this way for thirteen years. Working apart and then when he came home he in his time off we both kept working. He mowing lawns and working the local fire brigade. Me I kept working with the kids, my store, and the house. Both of us never stopped. Ever. Both of us started working young he eleven years old and me thirteen years old. Working it was routine; second nature for us.
We worked to pay bills. To get ahead. To become ready for later when we were ready to retire. To have some play money. Play money that we didn’t use to play. We planned big holidays but never took them. We planned to buy more houses and that we did. We brought them but then what comes with that? More work. However having said all of that we were; are happy, really happy both of us loved working keeping busy but the work it was routine. It’s what we did. We did it together and with the kids so we must have it right then right? Yet as happy as we were something was not really right like trying to work out that missing ingredient in a pot of a really good stew; something was missing.
Now I could tell you what all the good websites and professionals would tell you to do and we did all of this. We planned; I’m the planner of the planners. To take care of ourselves we did. We got outside help when we needed it. We learnt how make best use of our time; my husband started his wind down on the plane flight home and I make the best of bed time hours. We tried to switch off the phones but that is easier said than done and so we had a great four weeks be it with that little something missing but still we worked because it was routine and we thought we had it right.
But then we found it the mythical balance that missing ingredient we couldn’t quite put our finger on.
And the honest truth how we finally achieved this mythical work life balance came last Christmas as recent as 2012. We found it by something as simple as stopping; completely and we did it accidently on purpose. We just stopped doing everything well that’s a lie we did minimal housework enough to stop us choking on dust and drowning in dishes and laundry. We decided wall and window washing -all that could wait till it was cooler, when the kids went back to school. And the garden it developed a slightly overgrown fairy land appeal to which husband struggled with for a time but dealt with it by just mowing the lawn on his precious ride on. We stopped working simply because it was too hot to do anything. It was too hot to mow other people’s yards and there were thankfully no fires or car accidents so there was no adrenalin pumping or 2am call outs for FIFO husband. I closed the store and stopped writing for awhile. Husband stopped answering the phone for work. I minimised my face booking and although it was hard because I love the interaction it wasn’t for awhile.
Instead for those four weeks we slept, ate and played. We watched TV, movies and played with the kids more than ever. It was wonderful. It was our regular four weeks and they have always felt like a holiday but this time it felt like forever and it became addictive we have kept it up ever since.
We still work we have to it’s who we are and to some extent it still is routine but now come the four week weekend its truly tools down because it’s become a rule of sort and its weekend on. It feels great to get this right to work this hard it feels great to get this long lazy reward at the end.
How about you do you have it right this balance business? How did you achieve it? What are your rules? Do you have any?
