The fight for work life balance.... starts here.

Well its certainly been a while since I've blogged anything! .. Life has been manic, working ridiculous hours and then trying to remember which child to pick up, from where, and drop to where, and whether they need feeding.. No, I don't suppose it should be difficult, there are only three children and one of them has a very limited social life due to his young age, but somehow it has seemed almost impossible to remember it, let alone juggle it.  But when you work late in the evening and on the weekend so you can have one Monday afternoon off, and you work evening after evening and still have in excess of 1000  emails in your mailbox, it does go somewhere to explaining the "OMG what day is it" feeling you have by about 5pm each day.

However..  so far... I haven't forgotten to collect one yet, although it came close with the littlest one when at 5.50pm we remembered he was still at nursery.. (latest collection is 6pm and a late pick up is almost an "jailing event").. Luckily we live minutes away and little E was whisked home for lots of attention and cuddles with both hideously guilty feeling parents.

While I keep thinking that work will "quieten down", these "changes" will be the last and managers will in fact learn to manage their staff (oh please!) it doesn't change... it doesn't get quieter and looking into the work related tunnel ahead I have the almost overwhelming feeling  that the light I can see is a train!

So.. "do something else", says my 10 year old daughter, "leave and work elsewhere" says hubbie.. and while they are both probably right, its unlikely to happen anytime soon.  Why?  well...  we do have some great people there who want , need and appreciate HR support, whether they are managers or individual employees; we have a good HR team; but probably more key is a feeling of "not done yet"...  that if I was to leave now I wouldn't know whether all the changes and pain had been worth it?  and, in leaving, it would have been a waste of time; of hours spent.  But, there still needs to be some kind of mental endpoint here, a time at which you have to think, "ok, my work is done", or you realise that banging your head against the wall is probably not going to make it all go away.

And in the meantime, while work eats up time, hours and days go by where your children continue to grow up. Little E has just turned 1, and where on earth did that time go...  I have been back at work 6 months and feel, somedays, like I have missed a lifetime with him.  And its the same with the older two as well, while time doesn't appear to pass so quickly with them, it is measured in terms and holidays and this school year is nearly over.  One more term and my eldest is in the last year of primary school ...  moving up to secondary school... becoming a teenager..  I remember when that was me, how can my daughter be there now!

A wonderful HR Director (and boss) of mine once said something along the lines of "insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result"...and he is right.  So something needs to change!

So .. what will change?  Hopefully workload, but realistically probably not, so... work life balance will have to be fought for and some work not done.. that may be work work, or housework, but the battle to have time to be with the family and meet friends again is going to be fought and, if not won, then maybe thats the mental endpoint and I'll go set up my knitting shop that sells great flapjack!