It's pretty easy for me to forget to build my day to day life as well as I build my career.
After all, I'm an achievement junkie: I thrive on accomplishments. Work offers plenty of opportunities for both a personal sense of achievement as well as external recognition. Events in my daily life tend to have a lot less defined "finish line", and therefore don't offer a "Whew! Done! Great Job!" feeling very often.
The problem with concentrating the majority of my effort on my job is that jobs are not permanent. My overall daily life IS. Until I die, this is it - what I make of it is all I get: it's supposed to be primary.
It's also much harder to work on building up my day to day life. Doing things costs money; it costs time; and it can be emotionally risky to self-evaluate, determine deficiencies, and create action plans for resolution. It's much easier to just "go with the flow" - and try not to wonder why I'm not happier and more satisfied. It's also very easy to get overwhelmed at the sheer number of steps it would take to accomplish any particular goal - and with no one but me pushing for the goal, it's easier to "grease the squeaky wheel" (of work demands) than it is to devote the time and effort to my daily happiness.
"Just let me get past (X deadline), then I'll see about something nice for me."
Never happens. X deadline is replaced by Y urgent deadline which is replaced by Z.
Using the 43things site is proving helpful in recording some of my personal goals - which in turn, helps me remember to focus on them.
I did pretty well this past weekend:
- Had friends over for a beer & cheese / late night blab fest on Friday
- Went out boating on Lake Lanier with other friends on Saturday
- Played board games on Sunday
- Visited my little sister & met her new puppy on Monday
I managed to combine socialization, culinary adventures, activities I enjoy, and changes of scene, into all four days. I still had time to actually talk about mid-range plans with my husband, read two books, tidy up the house a bit, do a little cooking, run some laundry, do a little shopping for supplies, catch up on my gardening and cooking shows, and take a nap two days in a row.
That's pretty satisfying. Even if most of it was fairly serendipitous - I'm still going to give myself credit for working on my day to day life, and the achievement of balancing "gotta" with "wanna" for four days in a row.
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