Beyond Beeton» Career

Keeping it balanced

Rachel — Thu, 14 May 2009 14:46:25 +0000

In my experience, creating and maintaining a balanced lifestyle is one of the most difficult things to do.

I read enough zen and life management blogs to know it really should be easy - do what you love and what is important to you.

Doing it all?

But what if you're a greedy Gen Y who wants it all?

Perhaps, just perhaps, having

a stimulating, challenging career;
health (including a healthy weight) and fitness without gyms, sacrifice or monotony;
quality and quantity time with food, wine and the people I love;
a conscious, sustainable, environmentally friendly lifestyle;
being a domestic goddess (or something remotely resembling that); and
contributing to society in a positive way;

all at once, really is impossible?

Life balance in 140 characters or less

I asked some of my friends on twitter to tell me how they created and maintained life balance. I'd like to share some of those ideas and comments with you.

sunili, who is what you could conservatively call a crazy brilliant high-achieving Gen Y (read all about it at de minimis ago curat blog) told me:

I don't but I try...

Oddly, it is rather reassuring to see that I'm not the only one struggling with this. Personally I think she's doing a pretty good job of managing her career and living in accordance with her ideals and convictions.

photo credit: justice is blind

I also got some practical advice from frank_in_oz:

I work my butt off 10 months of the year and have 2 months off for short breaks - hiking, travel, camping. Goal - work 6 mths

Frank is the consummate active traveller and outdoor lover and has hiked in some absolutely breathtaking places, including some of my favourite parts of the world.

This is great advice if you can swing it. My heart leaps at the thought of that much travel. But. What if the 10-month work cram is just too hard, or just not possible? My husband and I are in the stage of our careers where taking this sort of time off work each year is all but impossible.

photo credit: dove lake

Balance is the level of compromise you can live with.

Sage advice from hazelblackberry who proves you can do anything after a Bex and a Good Lie Down. I really think this is key.

photo credit: fruit balance

We really need to be kinder to ourselves and stop striving for perfection in everything, all the time, all at once. We have a lot of life to lead and we don't need to do it all now.

Via a tweet from tessgiles who blogs at Anchors and Masts I discovered Magpie Girl's Do Less Campaign. Magpie Girl reminds us that sometimes, it just isn't possible to do it all and we just have to do less. The campaign officially starts tomorrow, Friday 15 May and will be a step-by-step approach to doing less and feel better.

So if you're feeling like the balance just isn't happening, you might want to head over to Magpie Girl's blog to take a look.

Alternatively you could try what has been my strategy to date - try to do everything, over-commit, collapse in a heap and then fail at everything.

One relationship, two careers – how to cope

Rachel — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:02:55 +0000

In my day..

In the good old days, life was better. Men worked and women stayed home, kept the house, looked after the kids and wore frilly aprons over pretty dresses.

photo credit: KimmiK

Everyone knew their place and life was simple and modern issues of career vs career and whose turn it is to race from work early to pick the kids up from day care were non-existent. Something like that anyway.

Oh no! Here comes feminism!

Along came feminism and we fought to get away from the sink and into the classroom and boardroom. We did such an awesome job at proving women can and should do anything (more like everything) you could say the choice has almost disappeared in the opposite direction.

If we accept the reality that for many modern relationships, two incomes are required and desired, life becomes a bit tricky. Particularly when you consider there is often little or no functional difference between partners in income and the level of commitment to career (and education).

So who picks up the kids from day-care when you're both slaving in the office at 7pm in the pursuit for a corner office with a view?
Who takes the bin out before going to the gym before work?
Who washes the floor while muttering into a dictaphone on a Sunday afternoon?

The division of labour is all messed up - and with that comes serious risk of conflict of a relationship-killing kind.

People have been harping on about equality for quite a while now. If large corporates and the government can't get it right in the boardroom, what chance have we got in the home, where relationships are under even more pressure?

The Seesaw theory

Now this may well be unpopular, but my view of equality in the home does not involve an equal division of labour.

There is no equal. I promise if you concentrate on making things exactly equal at home you are likely to fail. Spectacularly.

You can waste a lot of time thinking (often out loud, usually brought up at a completely unrelated moment) that cooking dinner is harder than putting the dishes away. It doesn't matter. It may well be. Arguing about equality achieves absolutely stuff all.

The reality is that in a successful partnership, sometimes one partner will do more. Sometimes the other partner does more. It balances out.

photo credit: bug138

Think of it like a seesaw, if you each push up and down, you're both on the seesaw and sometimes you're up and sometimes you're down. It takes a damn lot of effort to hold the seesaw at even height without one or both falling off.

Could it work?

The way it works in my relationship, and, I suggest might work in yours. Start by working out expectations:

What does clean mean to each of you?
What constitutes a weeknight dinner?

Sort out a friendly middle ground. Then each do what you're good at/don't hate too much and outsource whatever is left over.

If you approach it with an open mind it is not that hard to manage. I promise. Be flexible and pick up the slack when the other person has a crazy deadline or is sick or is just sick of it.

If you've got a good partner they'll do the same for you and keep you both on the seesaw.

For more tips for a great relationship, take a look at The Secret Ingredient for a Better Marriage at Zen Habits. It is written by Corey Allen of Simple Marriage.

Feminism really needs to go away and leave me alone for a while

Rachel — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:01:03 +0000

There's nothing more empowering than having your apron strings untied from the sink.

photo credit: The Modern Homemaker

Unless you get untied from the sink so that you can trot off in a wool suit to your box on the terrace for every daylight hour and more besides, after which you will glamorously engage in up-to-the-minute witty banter with 40 of your nearest and dearest colleagues who you are dining with again.

You then of course go home, ring your mother and actually listen to what she says, clean the toilet, put the bin out (you're a liberated woman after all), read the paper and a few novels (see the witty banter point above), bake something nice to take to work tomorrow and save at least 15 children from starvation or tractor accidents or something, all while looking hopelessly alluring.

If you're managing all that and vodka isn't a part of your daily routine then I hate you and there is nothing for you here.

Perhaps feminism should go away and focus on the serious stuff, like stopping honour killing and human trafficking and schoolgirls wearing their boyfriends' trackpants. I don't want to be "empowered" to do anything else!

photo credit: Little Sweetie

One of my guilty indulgences is to imagine that I'm a 1950's housewife and I don't need to juggle at all - I would just need to raise perfect kids and keep a spotless house while wearing lovely sticky-outy poofy skirts with poodles on them.

Unfortunately I'm not that great at housekeeping really and if the behaviour of our cats is any indication I'd be a pretty awful parent. I think I could handle the poodles though.

So what has feminism done for me? It has allowed me to do a whole multitude of things all at once and justify being pretty ordinary at all of them.

I have a life full of chaos, contrast and craziness and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Beyond Beeton: Introduction

Rachel — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 03:35:50 +0000

There is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife's badly-cooked dinners and untidy ways.

(Isabella Beeton, The Book of Household Management, 1861)

While the world has moved on since 1861, the fundamental need for a repository of information on household management remains. Arguably, the need is even more pronounced in 2008.

This guide is not an anti-feminist diatribe. Nor does it seek to reposition women back into the kitchen, barefoot and silent. What I aim to do is to provide the essentials of running a modern home, for both men and women.

Unfortunately I'm still trying to work it all out myself. I'm just a 20-something woman who is trying her hardest (and sometimes gets it right) to manage a career, marriage, household and still have time for all of the important things, like shoes, food, wine and coffee.

One relationship, two careers – how to cope