80 Hours a Week
Dear VTY girls,
Do you believe in life after work?
I received some interesting feedback in my annual review the other day.
I was told, “don’t be afraid to work a few extra hours, you don’t have to stop at just 40.” This is--of course-- ridiculous. I frequently work more than 40 hours a week, but even if I didn’t, why is going above and beyond all of the sudden the standard? I brought up this concern with some of my work besties who feel the same. We lamented the idea that the 40 hour work week is designed around a partnership where somebody is able to stay home and take on all the domestic labor while someone else brings home the bacon. In today’s day and age, my young married friend noted, it’s not possible for either of us to stay home and still live where we live.
I’m not married, I live with my parents, and at the end of the day I really just have to take care of myself. But I require a lot of care!
We then sat and worked out some math. Based on some conservative estimates of commute and other lifestyle choices needed to function -- you get 3 hours a day to yourself. 15 hours (during the workweek) for myself while my firm gets 40 feels like a hefty investment. And selfishly, I think “how dare they ask for more?!”
Maybe I’m surrounded by too many millennials, or maybe I just need to make my peace with work-life balance, or maybe I should have gone into public accounting so I would be forced to work 80 hour weeks. But I think there’s just more to life than work, sleep, eat, repeat. And I want to be able to experience it. But there are just not enough hours in the days!!!
Any advice on how to bend the space-time continuum to my benefit?
Very truly,
Julianne
Dear Julianne,
I too have been pondering work and life. I love my job (really really). I work from the comfort of my home office, attend silly little meetings with coworkers I adore, occasionally get to travel to extremely remote and interesting places, AND I have the satisfaction of knowing that the work I put in every day is actively advancing the cause which I care most about in the world - making clean and safe drinking water a reality for every person on the planet. And YET - I wonder, is this enough? I’m happy now, sure, but will I be happy in 5 years? Where do I even go from here? Is it a symptom of late stage capitalism that I consider leaving a few years from now to go slave at law school or some other higher educational institution either to prove to myself that I am smart enough or hardworking enough or just able to cut it in this cruel hard world? I am struggling with the idea that somehow work should be suffering. That it should wring out every drop of my energy and that somehow that would give me a heightened sense of pride in myself and my contribution. I also have a law-school husband who works very hard and will work very hard for our family and wonder, is it ethically wrong to maintain a job I enjoy and let him go grind it out?? Part of what I enjoy is not having to work my little fingers to the bone - I’m not built like that! And knowing all this about myself, I still feel guilty somehow that I’m not doing enough, aiming high enough, making enough money, or having ambitions worthy of the girl-boss I self identify as.
Anyways, maybe 24 is just the trenches. For now, I think I would benefit from some contentment mediations - perhaps speaking contentment over my own life as well as an acceptance that contentment is not acquiescence.
As far as bending the space time continuum - I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer. Except perhaps that sometimes when I am overwhelmed with the amount I have to do I put on noise canceling headphones with the interstellar soundtrack and a timer and pretend that accomplishing the task at hand in the time allotted is necessary to save a dying human race.
Much love, as always.
Sydney
Dear Julianne and Sydney,
Crazy turn of events, but I have mostly released myself from the bonds of this struggle!! Up until around this point in my life, I couldn't stand having too much free time and I believed that if I wasn’t trying to do Everything, Everywhere, All At Once™, I was a lazy little waste of oxygen.
Maybe I owe my former mindset to the school system for putting me in direct competition with my peers as a motivator, but now that I have graduated I have no impulse to grind more than I already am.
To give myself credit, I don’t think I have time to work more even if I wanted to. I work my admin job 8-5, do my press job off and on during the work day and sometimes until late at night, nanny on Sundays, and am working on creative projects like recording music and writing a play, all while trying to balance a relationship and my friendships. While juggling so many things is not very conducive to streamlined upward mobility, I have a nice balance of pursuits that inspire me and jobs that fund those pursuits! Nothing super impressive on paper yet, but I have also been really happy with where I am at recently, so as someone who isn't used to that, I am trying to take what Sydney said to heart- contentment is not acquiescence.
My takeaway is that what you gain from working harder and longer isn’t always worth what it costs. Suffering is inevitable but never enviable! We have to move away from that mindset that elective suffering for our work is a measuring stick with which we can gauge our work ethic and productivity. That mentality has been so ingrained in the American workforce’s psyche, but I think our generation has started to recognize how not only is it not sustainable- but it also doesn't get us nearly as far these days. So I say, if you can, take a day off and cherish it. If you love your job and are comfortable in it, start seeing that as a luxury and remember to be grateful, as that is not the experience for most.
V.T.Y.,
Avery
P.S: All contents of this letter should be taken with a grain of salt because it’s just true that people grind to make more money and money makes the world go round and while sure, it can’t technically “buy happiness”, I feel like that is something only people who don't have to choose between using said money for surviving or simple pleasures say.
Dear Julianne,
It frustrates me to no end to hear about the feedback you received in your annual review. It also astounds (and concerns) me that it doesn’t read as absolutely ridiculous to your reviewer. As somebody who has accepted that they will never climb a corporate ladder (I am instead staring into an abyss of ‘alternative’ pathways that could of course culminate in dreaded mediocrity), I feel no reluctance in my refusal to go above and beyond. It feels ridiculous to me that I should have to prove myself by sacrificing more of my truly cherished time to a cause I do not care about and that really does not care about me.
Still, when I was younger, I did picture myself in some sort of cut-throat, stylishly cold company within a sleek office building that I would conquer with cunning charm. Everyone else in my life saw this for me too,
prematurely crowning me the family success before I even graduated high school. I think they interpreted my quiet demeanor and maladjusted-ly verbose way of speaking as signs of a burgeoning Hustler. I could too, in the way that you can fashion up a beautifully ornate urn with glossy, vivid ceramics to contain a drab and underwhelming derivative. (Grace, do you think you would ever dabble in urn creation? I think you could come up with something quite fun!)
While searching for an itty bitty apartment to lease in Boston with my boyfriend though, I am currently feeling the pressure of expenses and wondering if I should have made myself into the cold, sleek corporate creature I thought I would be. The pangs I feel most intensely result when I consider that I know I could be making much, much more money than I am right now, had I chosen a more practical area of study in college—which was my intention going into it—and I would probably be doing the same amount of work that I am now. I wince because I told myself this path would free me from discontent, even with all of its ambiguity and struggle. I wince even more because I know my partner sees how sad it makes me to sacrifice so much of my personal time to work, and I know that he wants to free me from that burden, but I don’t want him to sacrifice his contentment for mine.
I suppose it’s not too late for anything. Was there a question I was supposed to answer? I also am at odds with the space time continuum currently. Perhaps we’re the problem, Julianne.
Very truly yours,
Mackenzie
