Law school taught me to work weekends. It taught me to stay up late into the night, get up early in the morning, and work through lunch. It taught me that a weekend spent purely on play was a weekend wasted. The school lectured about work-life balance but the lectures fell on ears made deaf by too many tales of competition for the top of the class and the jobs available to those who made it. Those of us who treated school like a full time job resigned ourselves to feeling like slackers and missing out on the top 10%.
I wish I hadn’t drunk of that sweet mad potion. It’s insidious flavor grips me in my sleep, pulling me out of dreams and into the land of midnight research and complaint writing. It keeps me at the local coffee shop all night long typing away. It tells me I should spend one day of each weekend working and I have a hard time ignoring it’s siren call.
My new years resolution will be to spend the weekend playing. I plan to cage my work beast and let it out only when it’s appropriate. This working all the time thing is making me lose sight of my reasons for working in the first place.
Wow, I totally agree. I had a 3day weekend this week and by Sunday I felt soooo guilty for just being lazy. It really sucked some of the joy out of spending time with my daughter. Glad to know I’m not the only one fighting all the guilt. I often feel like I’m not working hard enough/doing enough if I have time to enjoy to just be lazy. Never really thought about it, but all this really did start in law school.