Finding my work-life balance!

Finding my work-life balance!

Dictionary defines work-life balance as such – “the division of one’s time and focus between working and family or leisure activities”. I would rather call it work-family balance then! Another definition refers to it as the level of prioritization between personal and professional activities in an individual’s life. This is closer to my understanding, but I am still not comfortable with the phrase “work-life”. Is it implying that work is not life and personal activity is life? So, the 8-9 hours each day dedicated to my profession is not part of my life? Or should I pretend that I am not a living person during those hours ? This dichotomy between work and personal life by blatantly calling one life and silently calling another “not-life” is scary for a person like me who wants to live throughout the day and every hour of it. Balance for me is when I find my happiness in both spaces. Who says family time is always a leisure or a personal time? Ask those working mothers with small children or elderly to take care of back home. Family time becomes as much of work and sometimes even worse. Hence, for me this whole thing is about finding your mental and emotional balance while being part of both work and family life!

I personally have passed that stage where I was more exhausted at home/family than at work. My kids are grown up. For past 7 years, I am away from my family working in conflict areas or non-family duty stations and living a life like a nomad. “Work -life” balance for me is not about balancing home and work life every day, it has a different meaning – it is about keeping my relationships back home alive while I stay far from them. However, I am not talking about that in this writing. Rather, I am talking about keeping my spirit alive while at duty station where I am confined to a compound with very invisible line between work hours and beyond work hours. It’s the same compound, same colleagues, same topics within or beyond work hours how do I then ensure I do not lose myself then?

I began pondering about this subject as many of my friends and well-wishers who are connected to me through my Facebook and see me doing activities that are not typically expected from my age and profession like tiktoking, dancing, painting, dreaming, philosophizing on love, cooking, baking, partying and sharing them all on my fb posts are not very comfortable with my balancing act! Some of the good friends dare to confront me and say, “look you are working in UN in a good post, does it give a good impression if you post about your dancing and funny acting videos or paintings or other posts?” or “what will your junior colleagues or staff think of you? They will take you lightly, you have to appear serious or maintain weightiness”. Some will be sarcastic and say – “Oh you have so much time it seems!” ?I understand your concerns dear friends and family but this is what I think –

Yes, I am a professional person and I am committed to my profession and I hope to be so for another full decade! But look, what time will I have left in hand after a decade? Even if I have, I am half a century old already, how much of my dreams can I fulfil and who knows what my health and mental state after a decade will be. COVID time has taught me a lot. And most profoundly it has taught me to live every day and make the most of everyday doing things that makes me smile before I retire to bed. Do not wait till your retirement to do things you like to do! I often hear colleagues sharing list of things they would love to do -piled up as their after-retirement plan! You are a professional, but you are “you” first and that “you” are more than what you are paid for by your job. You are larger than your profession! Life is larger than what you do to earn your living! ?There are two days leave every week for a reason! There are provisions for annual leave too for a reason. Again, each day has 24 hours, 8-9 hours of office work is enough, and you don’t need to sleep wearing your tie! Learn to retire from work every evening till you return back to work next day! Learn to retire every weekend and during leaves! As for me I simply decided not to wait for things till I retire! This is work-life balance for me and it happens every day! I would not like to be in a place where I have to keep on thinking of leave or retirement!

This is what I do – Before I go to office each morning, I avoid becoming a human machine and put my whole energy thinking about work before I reach my workstation. When I wake up, I make sure I have time for myself. for bit of yoga or meditation or listen to some music or positive affirmation and vibes and videos, a quick chat or messaging with loved ones wishing them a good day while I prepare my tea or get on with my morning routine. I do not always wake fresh but on the contrary bruised and broken most of the time. Whether it is my menopausal hormones or hypothyroid or Fibromyalgia as the doctors diagnosed, I mostly wake up feeling drained of energy and with aches here and aches there. I make sure I have time to deal with those, accept the way I am feeling, or my body is feeling and give it time to feel loved. I try many home remedies like homemade ayurvedic tea to boost metabolism, my own home-made scrub for my face wash etc. Of course, at times, my body just tells me to sleep and do nothing in the morning and then I listen to it and just get up just on time for the office. But I can distinguish between my body really wanting to rest or my body getting into “ah same damn routine what is excited about getting up” kind of pre-depression mode. ?With the thought of good breakfast or happy music or something nice I try to get excited about the day.

This morning routine and giving time to myself really helps me be productive during office hours. Once I am at my office, I am present there in the office -body and mind both. Even during the office hours, however, I take proper breaks when needed- small breaks for coffee or proper lunch break where chatting with colleagues about matters of their homes and families or hobbies is so refreshing. Remember, your staff and colleague are humans too and remind them this so that they do not become robots as well. Make enough space in your office for smiles, jokes and emotions. If you are a boss, your compassion and demeanor determine whether the work place is heaven or hell for your staff. Keep it happy!??This is healthy not only for yourself but for your colleagues and believe me a happy team performs and delivers most! Put up a ghastly ghostly face and same will stare back at you throughout the day!

Once I am out of the office, as much as possible I do not carry my work back home! ?Unless urgent or working on a deadline. Yes at times, the overtime work and results can rather be enjoyable and the results make you happy but make sure that you are not doing them because you have forgotten what else to do! Or you have forgotten to live outside of your work! Or you have become addicted to it! You have simply become addicted to it if you feel guilty not thinking of about work, not checking your emails during leave and you feel guilty enjoying life! Do work outside your working hours only when it is absolutely necessary! This is another lesson from COVID -work -from -home times. I realized that we were losing sense of time and line between home family and work. The laptop was open 24/7 and most of us were responding to emails all the time even midnights as and when they arrived. I realized that I need to break properly from work and started closing the computer. Most of the emails that still appeared in my mobile could wait for my answer until next day office time! I wonder who thought of having office emails on the phones!!! Some offices who provide mobile sets to staff even think that they have now bought the staff for 24 hours. I remember till I was working in GiZ and we did not have laptops, work would stop at 5 pm sharp. We did not carry our laptops home and we had no emails popping up in our mobiles. In fact, I remember circular in the office cautioning those working over office times which was something like this "If you are working overtime then it means 1. You are not efficient 2. you are overloaded, if you are the boss learn to delegate tasks or talk to your superviser 3. you do not have family or friends who are waiting for you but do not use office facilities overtime to kill your lonliness you are wasting electricity, you are making others do overtime as well ! This has changed so drastically in the past decade with offices providing laptops, mobile sets or even data to each staff, the staff are expected to be available all times. This must change! In fact I believe the offices must make rules against this.

Since 2016, I am working in non-family duty stations and away from my family. Which means I do not have much of household responsibilities to carry on with once I am done with office work. I could complain about my loneliness and think of leave all the time but I chose to believe that this was a God-given time for me. I remembered the time when my kids were small, I had to rush in the morning to send them to school, prepare their breakfast and their lunch boxes, rush back home to attend them again, their homework, dinner and again endless functions and obligations. Now, the time is all mine! Maybe I had wished for the me-time too hard, and God really listened! ?I was stuck in Myanmar for two years straight during COVID time. The anxiety coming from the pandemic was unavoidable as it spread across the world and people started losing their families and friends. I was in a country with one of poorest health infrastructure and back home my country Nepal was the same. I feared for my family back home and for my elder son who was also stuck in Australia that time. I had to take my mind off the fear and indulge myself in things that stop me from over thinking. I started doing two things that I had always wanted to do – Dancing and Painting! I took online class for Indian Classical Dance and self-taught painting through the greatest of gurus – you-tube!! I even enrolled for my second master’s degree in project management in Online Business School, Barcelona!

I had time!! My office let’s say including getting ready and commuting time is 10 hours per day! I sleep for 6-7 hours per day! I still have 7-8 hours in my hands!! Isn’t that enough to do things that I like? Even if I become couch potato for 3 hours or I indulge in everyday cooking or cleaning,?I still have 3-4 hours in my hand to indulge in things I love to do! Back to Covid times- My yoga classes were in the morning before office time! My dance classes were during weekends! I used to paint during weekends and my master’s classes were mostly in the evening few days a week. Besides these, I had time to bake, I had time to cook and invite friends. I also created a family online platform to share all the old pictures and memories. There were more than 300 family members -three four generations apart sharing all the old family history and pictures and discussing about family history! Within short time there was such a precious collection of old family pictures and history and even reconnecting with family members that that been away for more than 50 years or some we had never met because they had migrated one or two generations ago. Many of elderly relatives shared how this FB group kept them from becoming depressed. Everyday, they would look forward to see old pictures and fond memories.

We don’t have time if we sit! Stand and move and see how much time you have and what you can accomplish! Your own hands are magic! I loved it when it creates! Creates things like bread, croissants, donuts, cakes, embroidery, painting, home-made jams or marmalades! I started making short dance videos and shared with my friends. Some weekend I would just dedicate to prepare a few minutes dance recital and it kept my mind and body so refreshed. I also realize that to remember the steps, to memorize the wordings of the songs -it is a mental exercise! It is a real struggle to memorize steps but I am ?happy that I am exercising parts of my brain. At work and in our professional life we are analyzing, putting things together, information is available in the computer or stored somewhere and we manage things from those but memorizing dance steps was something that really made me think -Oh I was almost losing this part of my brain. Coordinating hands and steps and expressions and then memorizing it – try it! it’s an exercise more for your brain than your body! At least I felt so! Tiktok was the best App for video editing! I see people make their faces- “oh you have tiktok account? I only use twitter!” They have managed to put labels and judgements here too! I keep my FB and other accounts mostly work free! Some may just want to share about work- that’s fine! Pasand Apna Apna!?All these activities and social media actually helped me to sale through the Covid times. I had many friends who followed my posts and said these inspired them to do things too and keep their sanity during the pandemic and lock down times.?I must thank Almighty that my immediate family and friends were all okay and survived the pandemic. And I earned my second Masters degree as well although this wasn’t particularly an enjoyable journey. This was something that really added to my work – the assignments and group works and deadlines! Many times, I regretted putting myself through this pain but at the end it paid off.

Now about my posts-Yes, I am woman, half a century old and I am proud of every single time on earth that I am lived, I honor my age while hating some of the changes it is ?bringing in terms of my health! But this is the very reason I make use of time! Every single time in hand that I have! One thing I do not is watch TV or serials or movies. I know how easily this kills time. ?This is something I reserve to do with my younger son during my breaks who always puts aside one or two good things to watch together and waits for me. I love doing things and creating instead and if I sit down for long hours, I am either reading or listening to music which still helps me to dream, to philosophize and to romanticize. When I create things, I want to share, and I love sharing them with my friends and family! I do not fear judgements, what is there to judge? I am just a person who loves doing new things and I am neither competing nor showing off! I am happy as a child when I achieve these little challenges like a dance piece, a painting, an embroidery, a croissant and I am just sharing what I have created because you see I live by myself in a far-off land, away from you all for so long! I would love to invite you over and share the bread and bakery and other foods or show you my paintings or dance during occasions, but I cannot do that and instead I just share these through my posts! In doing so, a ?part of me also wants to reach out to those who have forgotten to live every day, those who think you have to wait for retirement to fulfill your other dreams and desires, those who think a professional person cannot be seen doing otherwise! Let go of your ego’s dear friends! Be like a child in your hearts, free and carefree -bring that teenager or a child in you back to life!

Live your life every day and find your happiness in whatever you do! Many think work life balance is about balancing your work and family while both maybe stressing you out! No, its more about taking care of yourself and your inner spirit everyday- at work and at home! It’s about aligning yourself to happy thoughts and vibes at both spaces. Work and life are not separate. Where we spend half of our waking hours cannot be separated from life. So, don’t be afraid to smile and find joy at work too. Ask yourself are you happy with what you do at work? Is your work environment happy? Can you change something and make it a happy place? Do not stay long in a place where you have to think of retirement and holidays all the time! Have courage and faith, find something else and move on for life is far too precious to be unhappy half the day! Change the way you feel about your work! Take it as part of your happy life!

I love my work! I am blessed to be working in a field of my choice and compassion and in a land that I feel needs me most! Although fear and frustration are part of being in Afghanistan and working for women here, there is no where I would rather be at this moment. Our presence here among the Afghan women are helping to keep their hopes alive, we are doing our best! Even if we do not succeed, we are still here giving our shoulders to the Afghan women in any ways we can! We laugh and cry together! The adversity here has led me to admire things that we often take for granted in our places! When I see women back home or elsewhere, dressing up in their chosen style, walking and talking freely, expressing themselves as they like -writing, dancing, singing, acting my heart breaks for Afghan women and girls. I’ve realized the value of freedom and when I express myself, I am not going to let any fear or judgement stop me from sharing it. These fears and inhibitions coming from “what will people think? Judge? Say?” are like those restrictive regimes within our heads! I chose to be free and share joy whenever I can, wherever I can, for now FB is my favorite platform dear family and friends as I am in a far-off land! Last weekend I was in a mood to write and hence this piece!?:-)