Going Cuckoo
Work-life balance is hard for me. My career is the primary outlet for my ambition, and I get a sense of accomplishment when I excel at work. I’m easily tempted to let work absorb any spare time and energy. Even when I shut down the computer after the requisite 9-5, a preoccupation with work shows up during off-hours, visible in the way I live. I reach for hobbies that will help me decompress from work and limit activities to those that don’t require me to expend the limited brainpower I have left. I know my subconscious is still thinking about work in the background. I don’t know how to set boundaries in the intangible space of my mind. Work and life are simply interwoven too tightly. I've come to the conclusion that work-life balance is a misnomer. Metaphors range from pies to seesaws to rubber balls. Nevertheless, they all imply that I just need to firmly section off slices of time and energy to find balance. But it doesn’t work because work is a cuckoo.
Cuckoo birds are a brood parasite; they lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species. When the chick hatches, it is larger than its fellow nest-mates and easily fights for more of the food. As it grows stronger and the other birds are weakened by less access to resources, the cuckoo will push the other chicks out of the nest. Eventually, there is only the cuckoo, and the host parents are mistakenly grateful that one bird survives to adulthood.
Work is my cuckoo — the fears of financial instability give it priority over my energy. Unlike my hobbies, which feel like they can always wait until later, a sense of (false) urgency accompanies work, and there is invariably something in the backlog to do. After getting into the pattern of overworking, it is also the strongest habit, the easiest to feed. Its masquerade as an innocent chick tricks me into thinking I can share my energy evenly, but work does not play fair. I do not want to end up with a life that only revolves around work.
I want an entire nest of cuckoos; I want to uplift the other parts of my life to be just as greedy and competitive for my attention. I will not find the answer by limiting how much I work. Instead, I want to funnel my ambition and energy towards personal interests and hobbies first. I will build habits to make reaching for hobbies and prioritizing relationships feel like the default option. Work will have to compete for the attention it thinks it deserves. It will take time for me to cultivate the slightly neglected parts of me, but I hope to end up with a well-rounded life and a sense of accomplishment tied to every part.