It is Work to Live not Live to Work

In the United States, we have our Thanksgiving this month. This is a time where families come together for a huge meal. For many, it is a time to see family and friends they haven’t seen in months and to reflect on what they are thankful for. For some families, it is time for them to argue over politics, sports teams, or any other subject.

For me, I like to reflect on all the things that I am thankful for and one of those is for being able to have a proper work/life balance. That hasn’t always been the case. When I was younger, I thought I needed to work 60+ hours per week. To be fair, work was also my hobby. I was in love with technology, building networks, and playing in my home lab. As I got older and built a family, priorities changed and so did some of my hobbies.

It is a delicate balance of trying to juggle work duties and obligations with trying to have a work life balance. This is even more challenging if you are in an on-call rotation.

I’ve talked with countless other technologist over the years at conferences and on social media about work and life in general. For those of us lucky enough to enjoy our jobs, we try to keep our focus on the phrase, “Work to live, not live to work”. We are all on this planet for a fixed amount of time. We should be spending as much of that time with our friends and family and doing things we enjoy. We trade our time for money to afford the essentials + fun stuff for life. Spend it wisely.

For all my technology friends or those that stumble across this blog post, please take care of yourself and do what you can to set boundaries for work and home life. With so many that transitioned from an office to work from home, you literally now live at work, so be disciplined to spend time on yourself.

Thankfully as a data professional I’ve been able to have a decent work life balance. I try to limit actual work to 40 hours per week, utilize my PTO days, and not miss any family functions. I like to spend time outdoors with gardening and tending to my property. I’ve also been looking into bee keeping and earlier this year I became a Master Tree Farmer via Clemson University.

Below is a photo of my garden this past summer. I’m still getting some produce until our first frost.