It’s currently Summer Friday season at work. And it’s so lovely I can hardly contain myself.

I was talking with a new coworker about Summer Fridays and she asked if I took them.

“Um, of course I take them,” I said. “They are there to be taken.”

She then commented on how protective I am of my work / life balance.

Friends, a decade ago, this comment would have sent me into a swirl of anxiety and depression as I could take it to mean I don’t work as hard as I should/could. And maybe it does mean that. But now, to me, it means I make my family a priority.

(However, if you want to get into the nitty gritty of it, I really don’t make my family a priority because I do leave them for most of the day to go to work. I’M JUST TAKING A PERK MY COMPANY OFFERS EVERYONE TO SPEND MORE TIME WITH MY KIDS. It’s not like I’m doing anything I really want to do*, like take a vacation or lounge around in my bed, watching Netflix while eating a cheese steak.)

Anyway, back to my conversation with my coworker. She doesn’t yet have children. So, she has time. She was telling me how she read this post about my messy house and it motivated her to organize her bookshelf. I looked at her as though she were an alien as I’m penciling in organizing my bookshelves for sometime in 2024.  (Hahaha. Just kidding. I will organize my bookshelves in NEVER.)

See? She can work super hard and still have time to organize a bookshelf because when she comes home, she has nothing else to do. I can work, come home at a decent hour, hang out with my kids, make dinner,  pack lunches, attempt to clean up my kitchen, and then pass out around 9:30 p.m. (This isn’t to say one of us has the better life or is doing anything better, it’s just to show that people who don’t have kids have extra time. They have hours and hours and days and years of time to do whatever they want to do.)

For me, there is no extra time. None. I feel like every hour of every day is accounted for. So when there is extra time being offered, I take it, hungrily. 

*This was a joke because all I really want in life is to spend more time with my kids. They are very cute and bring me much happiness. Wait. Let me rephrase that: All I really want is to work while also carving out more quality time to spend with my kids as there is no way I can be home with them all day long. I would be miserable.