Live to work, work to live.

Work. Ugh. Why do we do it to ourselves?

I am a firm believer in working to live, not living to work... in theory at least. However, somehow I start work at 8.30 in the morning (apart from the two mornings when I start teaching at 7.30)and rarely finish before 8.30 at night... i pass up doing things with friends during the week because I'm too tired from work, and I don't want to be utterly exhausted the next day, and yet I call this working to live? Sure... I live on the weekends, but during the week I work. Full Stop.

I think that what it must come down to is that obviously, work is a huge part of my life, and despite the amount that I complain about it, (which varies from minute to enormous depending on the day!), I do actually really love my job(s), and whilst I could quite easily give up either of them, I wouldn't. Hence, I haven't.

I love the variety that having two jobs gives me... and whilst none of the people at my 9-5(ish) job are the types of people I would normally associate with, and some of them they're not even really people I like all that much, and I'm quite prone to be a bit snappy when I'm under stress, particularly if I don't like a person. Some of them though, I really do quite like. I also understand that sometimes the way I feel is due to the fact that I'm their superior (for many of them), which must be quite odd for them, especially given that some of them have known me since I was 3 or 4 years old, and even now I'm only 23. The reason I'm in this business is because one day I'm planning on it being mine (likely jointly with my dear brother), and I already know alot more about it, particularly the day to day running of it, than many of them will ever know. The stress is created when I know when there are problems that nobody else knows about, but the flipside of this is that I get to share in the excitement when there are deals coming up that nobody else knows about. I like dealing with our customers, I like dealing with suppliers, if for no other reason than that usually by the time I'm dealing with someone, it's because there's a problem, a challenge. It's frustrating, but it's fun. I'm happy enough to do things like check my email at midnight and 6am because that's what's needed... and if there's one thing I have no patience for, it's people who are incompetent, particularly professionally.

On the other hand, I have my relatively low-stress "fun" job. I love teaching, I really do. I love that every lesson is different, every child I deal with is different and has to be dealt with and taught slightly differently. It annoys me that there is so much travel involved, but that's of my own making, and whilst I didn't plan it that way, it's really just too difficult to change now. Often though I can be totally exhausted after a stressful day at work, and seirously consider cancelling lessons. More often than not though, by the time I've finished my first or second lesson of the afternoon, I'm totally re-energised and get right into it, and whilst I'm still exhausted when I finish, I've enjoyed the afternoon. If I'm stressed, it's given me 3 or 4 hours of totally occupying my mind with something else, but something else worthwhile. My teaching involves very little work outside of the actual lesson time, so in this way, it's really the ideal way to complement my "real" job (and from which I derive as much income as my "real" job, for only 2/3 of the hours!).

So 65 or 70 hours a week of work, plus work at home, never being able to chuck a sicky when I'm not sick (living with your boss kind of puts the kybosh on that little gem), plus constant work discussions out of hours, constantly being on call for when any of the sales guys have a problem with their computers at 10pm (didn't you know i'm an IT expert too!). All of this, but you know what? This is my life, and at the moment, I wouldn't change it at all...

Alternatively, I might move overseas and start up a dive shop... who's with me?