This Feels A Lot Like Claustrophobia: Why work-life balance is a lie

I’ve kept a sticky note on my desk for years that reads: Work should be scheduled around life.

However, what I’ve come to understand is that life should not (and truly cannot) be compartmentalized. All the hours we are living, toil or leisure and all that’s in between, is life. Work-life balance is a myth. That’s not to say we shouldn’t approach life in a balanced way, but the idea that we can balance our forty/sixty/eighty hours a week against our “real” life is inherently flawed. Our humanity doesn’t exist only outside of those working hours.

This understanding was at the core of my desire and tenacity to become a solopreneur. Doing work I enjoy during the hours that make sense for my life has become a non-negotiable. Additionally, being able to help others achieve this truly balanced way of living is deeply rooted in my value system. I was burning out on the workaday hamster wheel and watching so many others do the same. My relationship with my son (and myself) was strained and I knew something had to change.

Every morning, the moment I was conscious, I’d ask myself what day it was. If it was the weekend I’d praise the gods, wait for my little person to roll out of bed, then appeal to him to turn on the coffeemaker (an important life skill I taught him as soon as his little hands could stretch over the edge of the countertop). I’d stay in bed another thirty minutes before getting a cup, maybe reading a little, and making pancakes for my now starving offspring. It would be about 9:00 now and I’d start thinking about our plans for the day and what housework needs catching up before I set myself to task attempting to balance domestic productivity with rest and leisure, usually tipping the scales and productivity would prevail.

Weekday mornings looked a little different. I’d ask myself what day it was. Wednesday. Shit. I’d immediately start running my to-do list through my head before my eyes were even open. I’d play a pre-recorded video of the workday (because most days were basically the same) then start arranging and rearranging the four hours between swiping my timecard and putting my son to bed. It was an impossible Rubik’s cube and I’d already failed. I’d hit snooze. I’d scroll Facebook. I should get up. I’d hit snooze again. I’d snuggle the soft and sleepy lump of littleness beside me, kiss his forehead, chug the glass of water at my bedside and begrudgingly head to the coffeemaker which ran on a timer five days a week. Same as me.

I’d start barking orders around 7:00. Clothes on! Teeth brushed! Take your vitamins! Waffles or bagels? (Always waffles). TV off! Shoes! Get in the car please. No we can’t play. Car! I’d shuffle my small human off to his fluorescent box for the next nine hours before heading to my own. But at least I had a window and I didn’t have to ask permission to pee or eat. I’d watch his little head bob all the way into the building and hold back the tidal wave of emotions. Every damn day.

We are not meant to live this way.

The evenings were a blur of unpacking and repacking lunch bags, assembling something that looks a little like dinner then cleaning it up, homework, and (if we were lucky and hit the mile markers of this marathon just right) quality time and maybe a little exercise. I’d start barking orders around 7:00. Clothes off! In the tub! Teeth brushed! Pajamas on! Which bedtime book? (Always the same as last night). TV off! Get in bed please. No we can’t play. Bed! I’d snuggle in with my small human and he’d ask how many more days of school this week. I’d hold him close as his little head nodded off to sleep, another day gone, and I’d hold back the tidal wave of emotions. Every damn night.

We are not meant to live this way.

I realize there are plenty of people leaning into this paradigm and perfectly content with the work-watch-spend cycle of living in a capitalist society that values individualism, but despises the individual. A society which functions well in theory, but much like Frankenstein’s monster, has outsmarted its own creator despite its dimwittedness and has become arguably uncontainable. I am not one of those people. I was a person being crushed under the weight of this paradigm, and I happen to have it much easier than many, which I am endlessly grateful for. Especially as a single parent. But still, most days my breath was ragged, my muscles ached, and my eyes were dry from running headlong into what felt like gale force winds.

Rates of addiction, depression, and anxiety are skyrocketing and they are measured on a global scale by loss of productivity. Read that again. A metric has been developed to determine how much revenue is lost as the result of our collective mental health crisis. This tells us all we need to know about the priorities of the system with which most of us are marching in time. What we already know. What everyone seems to be screaming and no one seems to be hearing. We are trading our lives for dollars (quite literally) and we are not meant to live this way.

We are meant to spend our days in the weather with our children and elders close by. We are meant to care for ourselves and each other in times of illness without fear or worry of taking the time (or expense) to do so. We are meant to ebb and flow with the seasons, changing our pace and routines as the days contract and expand. We are meant to have time for rest and creation and exercise and community. These things are not supposed to be wedged into the dark corners to be wrestled out into the spare daylight when we are done achieving, they are meant to be central to our human experience. The work of our life should be what is required to sustain our breath and heartbeat. It should not be our identity. It should not dominate our entire existence.

We are not meant to live this way.

Isolated in our homes. In our cars. In our cubicles. And while I have no perfect solution to offer that doesn’t require a complete shunning of the systems that offer us many benefits and comforts, I’m not a nihilist (most days). I have great hope for myself and for future generations that we can make small adjustments to what we will tolerate, what we prioritize, and what we find valuable, and those adjustments will build upon themselves to create new systems and ways of functioning. Shifts are already happening, many of them thanks to the covid pandemic which has shown us we can do many things differently, but it’s up to those of us who are being crushed under this weight to keep the momentum going. To set boundaries and say no to what isn’t working. To show our children how to slow down in an overworked, overscheduled world. To create new, microsystems in our homes and communities that pick at the edges and upend the current paradigm. This one is not sustainable. It’s beginning to crumble and it’s taking us down with it.

I sincerely hope to open a dialogue around these issues. I want to hear from you on social media, private messages, or email. I want to have a discussion as I find it to be one of the most important discussions we can have. I want to know where you’re burning out. I want to hear what you’ve changed or plan to. We’ve established a cultural virtue of complying without complaint. To complain is to flout your privilege and lack of perseverance. I am personally weary of persevering and I want to hear your complaints.

As one individual changes, the system changes – Ram Dass

What if many of us change?

- Candi

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