Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Work to Live or Live to Work

No matter what you do for a living, there is always a struggle for balance between your work life and your family/personal life.   We all want to support ourselves and our families at some minimal level, at least.  I'd hazard a guess that most of want some of the extras of life as well.  The little luxuries (however we individual define that term) that bring joy to our lives.
 
We want the money that supports and comfortable and enoyable life style.  But we don't want to become slaves to our jobs.  Work drones are no fun.
 
Pilots and flight attendants struggle with this issue with farther reaching ramifications that many in the 9-5 life.  When we're at work, we're not only away from our families -- we're away from home.  We don't have the ability to quickly take a break from work to attend an event.  There's no guarantee that we'll be home on time to make it to a conference.  Even on our days of we have to avoid answering the phone in case it's crew scheduling assigning us an extra trip -- an extra trip on our day off that we are not permitted to refuse.
 
Jeff, a pilot, does a nice job of explaining how he makes his decision in "Living the Dream." and gives us all something to think about.
 
I'm thinking about what my important "extras" are:  travel, shoes (hey, I'm a girl), a nice home, financially supporting causes that I believe in, Starbuck's coffee, and spending time with friends.  I'm willing to work to support those extras, but when my relationships with family and friends starts suffering, I know that it's time to pull back and reassess.  It's a constant process of realigning my priorities.  Balancing is not easy.
 
 
 
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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

no balancing is never easy. Nor is understanding priorities.

Somedays I think that Starbucks is my major priority, and those days it is. other times, it's saving the country--yeah right; still other times it's family or friends or both

I make no excuses for constantly shifting what I find important because that's life

Anonymous said...

Interesting blog!

I believe the priority needs to be ourselves. Everything in life flows through each of us first, it must come through us and when we are joyful then we, our family, friends and everyone else benefits!

Anonymous said...

Amen! No truer words have been spoken!

All's I need to do is get my mom to read that... she won't give up passing out peanuts if her life depended on it.. I'm too tired to get into details...

-Joey C

Anonymous said...

I think the balancing act is a difficult one to achieve if either you love your job or you have to keep your job (through poverty, having kids or debts, etc).

But if you hate your job and you're in the middle of trying to get out of it, it can be the easiest thing to do: doing the bare minimum (or, in the manner of Wally, even less than the bare minimum) and waiting for the silver bullet.

Anonymous said...

hi just bloghopped.. so ur a flight attendant?..w0w..
uhmm..what do they usually ask during interviews?..my final interview is on Nov 13..can u gv me some tips?..pls pls pls tnx!

tep_12@lycos.com
--email add

or u can visit my blog:

http://stephie12.blogspot.com

Fly Girl said...

Steph: Thanks for stopping by. I'll be glad to give you some tips for your final interview. Please contact by email (available on my profile) and let me know who you are applying with.

Good luck to you.