What do you do when you get home from work? Or do you even go from work to home?
I intend to go from work to the gym, about half of the time. When I do that, my arrival at the homestead seems much more peaceful, more settled, and an overall better experience. I’m not 100% sure where I am going with all of this, but suffice to say, I want to talk about buffer zones between work life and home life. I am 100% a “work stays at work” type person and I prefer for it not to bleed into my personal life. But let’s be honest, we spend 1/3 of our days at work, 1/3 unconscious and sleeping, and the other 1/3 on personal pursuits, housework, or preparing to deal with the remaining 2/3s.
This CBS News article has a fascinating study on how husbands and wives handle post work time differently, and what brings whom satisfaction… or not. I see how it ends up being so true in the Blake house. He likes to relax at the computer without someone asking him to fix it. I like to get my household in order, or cook dinner, or just enjoy a good time yakking to someone about my day. I had a meltdown recently which made me realize that I haven’t been utilizing a buffer between work and home as much as I really and truly honest-to-God should be. I used to have one where I would talk to my grandfather as I drove home, every day at 5:05 p.m., faithfully. I’ve done that since 2008 when I started working full time, so it was a deeply, deeply ingrained habit. Then suddenly, it was gone. And I am just now realizing that I am having a really hard time coping and adjusting. Avoidance only works for so long.
So here I am at World of Beer, playing on my laptop and trying to put some distance between office life and home life because otherwise any lingering anything gets funneled in the wrong direction. I am either very expressive or very emotionally repressed, clearly there’s no gray area where feelings are concerned. It’s the most beautiful South Carolina evening one could ever hope for, especially in the middle of March. I stopped at the house briefly to grab the computer and headed straight out. I feel like it’s doing me good and not just because of the beers, but they certainly help.
I won’t go to the gym everyday (because everyone needs rest days/I be lazin’) or I won’t always go right after work (because their schedule isn’t perfectly in sync with mine, much as I wish it was OFFER YOGA ALL THE TIME, JEEZ) but I still need buffers on the other days. Tonight’s midweek beer-scursion is one remedy to the problem, but my bank account isn’t going to let me do it every week, much less multiple times in the same week (though it should really loosen the purse strings, man), so I need more stuff to do. What do you do after work? Will I always require this separation of work and home? Or is it just due to current stressors? I’d love to know. I’d love to have the fix. I want it. I am going to try everything I can until I figure out the answer to that. But for now the answer is Chinese food.
