• Work/Life Balance is Where You Find It
Posted by Tom Harnish on June 26th, 2008
If you’re trying to find the right work-life balance, consider an archeology dig at home instead of gas guzzling trip. You could make a game of it with the kids, and award a prize for the oldest artifact they discover in categories like family history, written material, and even food. And no, we don’t mean you should go dig up your yard.
Maybe it’s just a reflection on us, but we discovered some ancient relics in our kitchen, and we know there must be some buried in our bedroom too.
As low fat, low calorie types, in general, we stay away from things like peanut butter and jelly. But there are times when a bagel or Ritz cracker with peanut butter is the perfect quick lunch or snack.
One of the nice things about working from home is that lunchtime can be whenever you decide it’s time. So after rolling into the office this morning at 5am, our stomachs told us it was time for lunch about 10:30—that’s equivalent to 2:30 if you’re a nine-to-five’er.
So we thawed some bagels in the microwave, toasted them in counter-top oven, cut them and slathered creamy peanut butter on each half. Jelly was next, and like stumbling on dinosaur bones in a glacier, we found a jar of apricot-pineapple jelly in the fridge door. Apricot-pineapple? We hadn’t had any for years.
Sure enough. The ’sell-by’ date was 2001. And there wasn’t even a microbilogy experiment growing inside.
But we did even better in the pantry. Looking for ingredients for dinner we spied an unfamiliar can of yams. With the recent jelly discovery in mind we looked at the imprint on the can. 1998!
Yeah, okay, not exactly from Pliocene Era or even the same importance as the International Monetary Fund review of the U.S. financial system that was announced recently. And this advice won’t save the planet. But, hey, working at home is all about work life balance, isn’t it? And balance is where you find it.
Wonder what relics the top shelf of the bedroom is hiding? No food, we hope.