Work-life balance and successful success

Lately, I keep coming across thoughts that work/life balance doesn’t really exist, and if you want to achieve something substantial, you need to forget about any kind of balance.

I see two meaningful opposites here:

1. I understand intensive work that you find meaningful, that aligns with your values, and such work brings high results: money, status, self-realization;
2. Undemanding work to cover basic needs, leaving plenty of time for self-realization outside of it (I see many young people choosing this path now).

And it seems like when people talk about work-life balance, they mean the second option. But in my view, the first option, though it’s tougher, is also impossible without this balance, because a person (especially with age) has a limited amount of resources, and I’m not even talking so much about physical ones, but about resources for generating ideas, making quality decisions, developing vision and turning vision into reality. So when I hear about endless work without time for quality rest, recovery and switching off, I always question the quality of that work.

But it’s quite possible I’m wrong, of course - after all, I can’t say I’ve achieved anything substantial myself.

Winding road

This week at work was quite nerve-wracking because I couldn’t put together a vision for the product I’ll be working on - everything was falling apart, seemed unfamiliar and scary. But then I reminded myself that this is exactly what I wanted from my next job: not to repeat what I already know and can do, but to learn something new, grow, reach a new level. So the fact that I’m feeling this way can be seen as a sign that I’m on the right path.

TV shows

I finished watching “The Day of the Jackal,” and if you think about it, it’s quite a strange story: none of the main characters evoke sympathy, almost everyone there is frankly bad. The Jackal isn’t Dexter with his code and elaborate reasoning about the boundaries of what’s acceptable - what he does, he does for money, and innocent victims don’t stop him at all from achieving his goals. The fact that he got upset twice about innocent people dying and shouted “Fuck!” doesn’t change the overall picture at all. There’s no justification for the Jackal whatsoever.

At the same time, sympathy for Eddie Redmayne made me worry about him out of all the characters anyway, and “how the hero gets out of an impossible situation” is one of my favorite genres, though here it’s spoiled again by that same permissiveness. And the finale in the style of comedies about charming casino robbers with a setup for the next season looks pretty cringe.

Guests with fish

My partner’s colleagues came over to our place for a non-alcoholic party with dried fish (fish being the central idea of the party). Some of them are more than twice younger than me, and such gatherings are always both interesting and somewhat of a test for me, because they talk about things that were quite recent for me as if they were ancient times, and these things possibly form part of my identity.

In any case, I was glad the party was alcohol-free.