Lately I keep finding myself repeating a sentence to people around me:

I’m happy to go to work and happy to come home

- an easy and succint way of saying -

Work/Life balance feels easy when you are challenged and fulfilled in both places. The challenges of one overwhelm? Time to swap for the other.

Of course, it is not always that ideal. Last week I worked six days in a row including a short change (where you work late one night and then early the next morning) and only found out about the last day of work after I was home and celebrating my (short-lived) start-o-weekend. But that is reality of small towns where midwives have emergencies in their own lives and there isn’t a great pool of resources to dip into.
Sometimes there is just the very newest midwife, tired at the end of her week, who must be called in because there is literally no-one else left to ring.

And yet, even in my grumbling, exhausted and, downright annoyed state, I was very quietly pleased. I am necessary, contributing, and part of a unique niche of skills. It feels nice.

At home, and at work.

Plus I am developing a fine taste for:

:: the exuberant stampede to my turning of the front door handle

:: occasionally my children getting sick of me and trundling off to find a daddy to cuddle with instead

:: feeling like my house-work is a helpful gift to my partner*, not a menacingly never-ending self-administered torture

Yes. . . it works

*note I have not asked him if he feels the same way!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 8th, 2010 at 5:56 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.