I Let Work Rob Me Of My Life

I’ve been working for 12 hours straight already. It’s 8 pm and I’m just packing up to go home, have dinner, and then possibly spend another 3 hours on client files before officially calling it a night.

Only to do it all over again the next day.

And the day after that.

I was fresh out of university and along with working 12–15 hour days, I was also studying to become a CPA.

Unfortunately, this was most of my life in my 20s.

I don’t necessarily regret those days because becoming a CPA opened up professional opportunities and taught me how resilient I could be. But there are days when I look back and question whether all that those hours working and studying were worth it.

Because aside from professional aspirations (and, sadly, I can’t even tell you if they were my own aspirations or if I was subconsciously going after someone else’s dreams), I didn’t really have a reason to bust my ass every day.

As I get older and look back on those days, I realized how I let work rob me of most of my 20s.

So many hours, so many days.

Work is more than just the money and ladder climbing

Many of us still can’t overcome the traditional picture of success.

I worked my butt off in my 20s because, in my mind, I couldn’t dissociate myself with the idea that work equals success. Work is what gives you the title and the money.

Plus that’s what everyone’s goal was — climb the corporate ladder and make the big bucks. Even now as a mother, I have a hard time distancing myself from the idea that money and work equal success.

It’s what I was conditioned to believe at a young age.

Both my parents worked full-time jobs and they needed those jobs to provide food on the table and a roof over our heads. Having a job, any job, wasn’t a choice for my parents. It was a necessity. They didn’t work to climb some corporate ladder or to make tons of money. They worked so that we wouldn’t go hungry.

And to this day, I still have this idea that work should come before anything else because how else can we survive?

The difference though is that my parents worked hard for the family in their 20s (my mom had me when she was 24) and I worked hard for myself.

But now my reason to work has changed

I became a mother in February 2019 and I’m set to go back to work in 3 weeks.

A full-time job never prevented my parents from being there for us. We weren’t in very many extracurricular activities but the ones that we were in, my parents were there for every big event.

Work never prevented them from being there for us because they were working for the family. Some days it’s easy to forget our reason for working but my parents never did.

In my 20s and part of my 30s, I was working only for myself. My husband and I have a joint account for shared expenses but the majority of my money and time belonged to me. I could work overtime with very little repercussions. The rewards of my job were for me and me alone.

But now I’m working for a different reason.

Now I’m working for my son, for a family of my own, for more freedom, and (a little more selfishly) to prove to myself that I have more potential than I give myself credit for so I can set an example for my son.

Your “other” life is not a fair trade for your work life

In our culture today, there is very little that is more valuable than work. From a very young age, we learn that we need money, and if you’re lucky, you have people in your life to teach you that money does not grow on trees and that you need to work for it.

Your parents might give you an allowance to do chores around the house, you might get a part-time job at 16, you learn how to budget and save your money for that something special you’ve had your eye on.

Whatever it is you want in life, you know you need to work for it.

And I wholeheartedly agree with that.

Nothing is a handout. If you really want something, you usually need to sacrifice something else and that something else usually ends up being our family, friends, and even our other passions even if that’s our reason for working.

But is your “other” life a fair trade?

My uncle is a bit of a workaholic. He’s been late to almost all our family events or he doesn’t show up. I don’t pretend to know why he continues to put work above everything else but if it’s to provide for his family, the irony is that he’s never there for them.

As the end of my maternity leave approaches and I now have additional expenses like daycare, I can see it is very easy to let work take over my life because now I have a son to provide for but I need to remember that my son needs me to be there for him more than he needs another toy.

My family is my other life and that life matters more than my work life ever will.

Don’t forget the reason behind your work

Whatever you’re working on, whether it’s one you’re working to pay the bills, a side hustle or a career you absolutely adore, don’t forget the reason behind the work.

Because the why is what really matters.

We dream of having it all — the money, the title, the house, the family. And, women especially, still feel the pressure that in order to be strong, we need to be able to have and balance it all, the work, the family, and our own interests and dreams.

We try to uphold society’s values and what others deem to be important that we often forget why we’re pursuing something, to begin with, and we internalize external values as though they are our own.

So often in the pursuit of our art and our work, we forget the reason for our pursuit in the first place.

At the end of the day, the work will always be there.

Always.

My family, as sad as it is, may not be.

So as I return to work in 3 weeks’ time, a photo of my family will be promptly placed on my desk to remind myself that 12-hour workdays are no longer worth it because I have something more important waiting for me at home.

This story originally appeared on Medium