Head Space Reclamation Project
"Work - Life Balance" is the wellness program phrase corporate america will often use to pledge that they will never intentionally endeavor to suck your life dry of personal meaning. When they say they'll respect your WLB, they are basically saying "you'll never be required to work 80 hours a week".... And they mean it. However, you are required to hit certain performance targets, which you'll agree to, of course... and if you fail to accomplish those within a 40 hour workweek... well, then, you do the math, and make your own decision about whether or not you work some unbilled overtime.
Truthfully, and it may be sick, but I've always felt that WBL is less about what the company promises and more about the individual's ability to set reasonable goals and manage their own time. No doubt this has deep roots in childhood and needs (more) therapy, but i always utterly fail to have a life outside of whatever project i am focused on at a given moment. My ability to set aside any "me-time" is undoubtedly hampered by the fact that i respond to stress by immersing myself in work. Kinda a "make hay while the sun shines" sorta impetus.
Anyway, realizing that i grow resentful when thus overextending, and then find myself having imaginary "fuck you" conversations with my employers (who don't deserve it, srsly) and/or clients (who may or may not deserve it, but still, better not to go there), which are eventually followed by periods of insolent self-destruction, and ultimately, incidents of crass pettiness towards peers/friends/colleagues... sometime last spring i decided to establish a regime of personal / non-work-related reading. As in fiction. As in books.
I think if you understood my previous relationship with reading, you'd understand how momentous this decision was. Because when i say i had a previous 'relationship' with reading, i really mean it was a relationship, just like the relationship you'd have with any other ex-lover... especially one who stole your heart, promised you an entire future, a whole way of life, but then failed you miserably, and you had to move on. This creepy analogue makes more sense maybe if you realize that for a great portion of my life i really planned to be a lit prof, and expected my life to essentially consist of people paying me to read books and talk about them. Well, so, turns out that life doesn't really pay so well, so i sold out, see and went for Mammon. So in various ways reading for me was nearly a painful pastime, for a number of years.
But i found myself now far enough removed from both the academic arrogance of my former education and the the poignant sense of loss, to be able to finally enjoy a few books. Because a part of me has never gotten over the urge to take notes or write about what i read, i can't help but abuse the blog this way. So i'll try to avoid spoilers where they are intrisic to the experience of the book, but no promises. Short notes on the following, then, following at some point:
