Ask anyone who works with me, or is friends with me, and they’ll tell you:I struggle to find a balance between my work life, and my outside-of-work life. I am, by genetics and life-long-training, a workaholic. My bosses have always been able to count on me to get the job done, no matter what, and my family and friends have heard “I can’t tonight, I have to work,” more times than I feel comfortable admitting.

For the last year or so, I’ve been trying to spent more of my time doing things that I love that *aren’t* work, and I’ve been doing pretty well with it. The weekends are spent doing things I enjoy, and only sunday nights have been work time, really. I’ve taken more road trips, spent more time with my Mom, and The Kings, and I really truly feel more complete for it.

There are some pretty big things that upset this balance:

1) I overcommit. It’s not so bad anymore, since I’ve figured out that saying no isn’t bad, but I still do it. I automatically plan for 50 hours a week to be work, and sometimes promise 70 hours of work. Whoops.

2) People quit. It happens, people move on, but the people that have been in the company long enough to have a relatively complete picture are fewer and far between. Too, when they leave, the workload has to be shuffled around until it settles again. I’m called on to fill a lot of different roles, and I love that I get to do so many different things, but it’s definitely a challenge.

3) I like my social life. A lot. I hang out with some of the single most awesome people on the planet.

4) I make no effort to separate the two. If someone from work calls with a question or an emergency, I will generally drop what I’m doing and help them. Likewise in my friends and family. Too, I hang out with people I work with all the time, and like to include my other friends in the same circle.

This comes up now because I am experiencing some discomfort these days, and I can’t seem to identify it. I’ve eliminated physical problems as much as possible (bloodwork!), and have (both) spent weeks drinking, and weeks not drinking. I’m even (slowly) allowing myself to develop some feelings someone I’m sleeping with for the first time in 2+ years.

The discomfort manifests in odd ways. A strong defiance to clocking more than 10 hours of overtime, even if I do other work from home. An urge to travel more. Less explosive reactions to the things that upset me at work, and increased compassion for almost everyone on the planet.

All the while, though, there’s something fussing me, and it’s growing stronger. It’s quickly becoming an urge to hide. Or to run. I can’t tell which. But if I don’t figure it out this year there may be an explosion.

Anyway, this is pretty raw brain dump and rambling. And, now that I think of it, completely out of place for this blog. It’s been a long time since I put this much of my brain’s ramblings on the internet.