Workaholic

In my first (non-baseball related) blog posting, let me just say that I have no idea what I'm doing or why I'm doing this. I know blogs are "so 2003", but even though I use Email, Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, and other online communication forms, I just can't cram what I say into 140 characters all the time.

So, what is this all about? Work/Life? Who wants to read online about work, right? I don't know, probably not many people, right. But I looked and a LOT of people blog about work...sometimes too much or in too much detail. I will try to avoid any entries describing anything related to this most recent work-related movie (which looks hilarious, by the way). As I picture it, the common theme of my blog entries will be the relationship between work and life.

I work a lot. I "put in" on average 45-50 hours a week. For someone who is not managing a hedge fund in Manhattan, that's a lot I think. I think about work a lot, even when I am not at work. I've been called a workaholic before by friends and family (jokingly sometimes, seriously other times). I can tell when I'm really "addicted to work" when my response is, "I can stop working this much whenever I want" (only a slight variation of the alcoholic's response, "I can quit drinking whenever I want". Thankfully my family and friends are patient with me and things work out (and no intervention has had to be staged yet).

No, but all joking aside, there is something fascinating about work to me, and to all of us. For some reason, one of the first things we ask people after we are introduced to them is "what do you do?" I do this all the time. In small talk situations I'm sometimes more interested in talking to people about their work than I am about the other areas of their life (family, community, spirituality/religion, hobbies, etc.).

If you look at work from a time/mathematical standpoint, think about how much time you spend at work and how much time you spend not at work. There are 168 hours in each week. If you sleep 8 hours a night (does anyone really get 8 hours?), you can subtract 56 hours, which brings you down to 112 hours. If you work the "standard" 40 hours a week, that really only leaves you with 72 hours left to "play" with. If you work 50 hours a week, you're spending just under half your waking hours at work. A lot of people continue to be "connected" to work (through email, phone, text messages, and other ways even when they are not "at work". This trend leads to the blurring between work and personal/home time. I don't thing this trend is going away either, as there are only more and more ways to stay connected and tied to work.

Bottom line, I and I think most of us spend a lot of time at work, thinking about work, and connected to work. So, there has got to be something to this whole work/life thing. That's why I want to talk start talking about it. Let me know what you think about all this.