# Work Life Balance Takes Work And Life To Make “Balance”

- Link: https://www.andreidraganescu.info/2017/03/22/work-life-balance-takes-work-and-life-to-make-balance/
- Published: 2017-03-22T16:31:26+03:00
- Author: Andrei Draganescu

![](https://draganescu.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/0a3bc-1zlm4ltm9ahofymmiuk5crg.
jpeg)

Are you thinking about having it all? You know, a baby, a spouse, a multi million
dollar golden parachute crowning your executive level career, yearly vacation time,
healthy eating, exercise, sex, spirituality and philosophical musings about the 
amazement of existing?

That’s not even an exhaustive list.

You know the exhaustive list is infinite, don’t you?

Our society took that list and split it in two: work and life. There are three ways
to work on these lists.

First, put work front and center. Has been tried, doesn’t really work. For average
people, it looks nice but it tends to create the suburban 50’s hell of a life we’ve
seen depicted in thousands of ways. For excelling people, it is a ticket to burnouts
and excessive lifestyles, wolf of wall street style.

Second, put life front and center. Has been tried and it produces mediocre work.
For average people it really is impossible, because average workforce doesn’t really
have this choice. You know you don’t, stop lying to yourself. Since others have 
the money, and you must do stuff to get money, your averageness takes leverage away
from you. For excelling people, life first makes small business mavericks. That’s
all, and that is pretty mediocre as far as capitalism is concerned.

People who are neither average, nor excelling are too busy surviving for having 
either real work or a real life to balance.

Now, there is the third, and worst, if you ask me, option: both are important, life
and work, so lets put both front and center. Well, how ‘bout that, does this sound
like having your cake and eating it too? Sure does to me.

The problem, as I see it, is that when I think of **merging work and life and paying
equal amounts of attention to both at the same time**, I envision this guy:

![](https://draganescu.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/37f18-1fnmuc3pbnxnbjockjowfaa.
jpeg)

The problem?

This monocycle juggler with a functioning chainsaw does not see himself, **he only
gets the action not the show. **And that is the problem with work life balance.

You’re a spectacle for everyone else. The Aderall moms. The heart attack at forty
pops. Everyone wonders how you can do it all, everyone is in awe, yet it is you 
who try so hard not to shit your pants whenever you must catch that freakin’ chainsaw.

Then in the middle of that juggle wanderlust comes knocking. What do you do? Shall
you answer your calling or shall ye yield to the life-society complex?

My idea is that they work by sequential planning. Dunno, hasn’t really got me where
I dreamed tho. But it is better than the other three I’ve tried. There are years
for work and years for life. Months for work and months for life. Weeks for work
and weeks for life. If you get to days, your days are counted. I have seen around
me examples of people who have done it the sequential way intuitively or simply 
out of luck. They’re better off than I am mentally, physically and, yes, some financially.

The others? Hm. Most lie. Lie big time. My wife had an epiphany: that saying about
the perfect woman being a lady in the parlor, cook in the kitchen, whore in the 
bedroom, well it doesn’t exist _at the same time. _You can be all of that, but not
at the same time. And, from my personal observation, those who claim they are, they
have no clue what either being a lady is, cooking is or sex is. Something is always
missing. You’ll get dayjobs equated to careers, two maids and a nanny equated to
being a Stepford wife, or giving head equated to some ultimate perverse kink.

There is also the male counterpart although for us men there is no saying because
patriarchy has no sense of humour or self irony. With the exact same misguided bravado:
blue shirted middle managers equated to CEO responsibility, driving kids to school
equated to parenting or knowing Tinder slang equated to a verifiable track record
of truly satisfied ladies. See patriarchy at work? I can’t even make the second 
joke good enough.

Anyway. People lie. Why? Because society rewards lies.

Any standard which is widely accepted will become the gist of most human lies, for
the life of that standard. Just look at all those Instagram body shots, do they 
all share the same angle or what? Did those models who came out about perfect poses
really did surprise anyone?

So is work life balance. A socially accepted standard. You gotta or you’re out.

But what happens when you catch the functioning chainsaw at the wrong end?