Why have work/life balance when you can just have life-balance?

ME

Why I Started this Blog

I’ll never forget the first time I started working as an employee in my first high-paying corporate job.  I was excited to be making “real money,” and felt ever so proud of my “good fortune.”  At the risk of embarrassing myself, I will even admit to you that I got misty when they showed me my office for the first time.  It was my first real office. 

My first few months on the job felt glamorous.  I didn’t know it at the time, but I had been sipping the proverbial kool-aid of, “go to school, get good grades so you can get a high-paying job,” for so long that I found myself on the equivalent of a sugar high.  And like all sugar highs, the inevitable crash was just around the corner.   

They seemed to ease me into the grind slowly.  At first, the workload seemed reasonable and everyone was friendly.  And no one looked at me funny when I left for the day at 6 p.m.  By the time I got home, there was enough time to make dinner, clean up, watch a little tv, and go to bed. But as the months went on, things began to change.  

I started staying later to keep up with my increasing workload.  It was then that I noticed the boss would circle the office sometime after 6 p.m. to see who had left for the day and who was still working; I came to find out that it was one of his ways of keeping tabs on those who were “working hard” and those who were “slacking off.”  He would comment on the “slackers.”  How dare they leave on time!  I learned that you could stay on the boss’ good side by staying later.  In addition to that, I also had to follow a laundry list of office memos that had very strict consequences for disobedience.  For example:

  • If an employee was late more than three times in a quarter (even by one minute), the boss would start docking your PTO.
  • Each employee was required to send an email to the boss upon arrival, upon leaving for the day, and anytime you would leave the office for more than 20 minutes. 
  • If you failed to enter your tasks on the calendar in a specific format, you would receive a strike. After five strikes, the boss would start docking your bonuses in $50.00 increments for each mistake. 

Then I noticed the extremely high attrition rate.  Co-worker after co-worker would get fired or quit.  My boss talked about everyone who left, often implying that they couldn’t hack it at a company as prestigious as his.  And while I was glad–for the moment–that I still had my job, all of the work of those fired/quitting employees had to go somewhere.  In the corporate world, the reward for good work is often just more work. 

The last thing you ever wanted to do was to upset the boss.  He would regularly yell and berate employees in front of the whole office.  And if you ever emailed him a “dumb question,” he would respond to you and CC the entire office. 

I began changing in many ways. One of the first things I noticed was how impatient I became in my everyday life.  It seemed like every day I came home from my dream job, later and later–which meant less time do other things that I enjoyed. I found myself getting irritated when the train was late, or when I was put on hold for too long.  I became very selective of what I did with my time so that I would not “waste” it.  If something was going to take longer than I thought it should take, I would abandon it. 

Instead of cooking, I was eating out; and instead of working out at lunch, I was eating at my desk. All of that fast food was catching up with me.  I was gaining weight. 

My friends began to notice the changes in me.  I smiled less.  They would tell me I seemed less “chipper” over the phone. And on one of the rarer occasions that they actually saw me, all I talked about was work.  Then, I began to hear those questions: “Why are you still at this job?” “The boss said what to you?”   “You seem different.”  

I had become part of the problem.  I was now one of the “grinds” that I used to feel sorry for.  I was working long hours, making good money, but I wasn’t happy.  In fact, I was miserable.  My relationships were suffering.  My health was deteriorating. And my life began to feel like a living hell. 

Looking back, I now know that I was in the rat race: a toxic scene where employees are pitted against each other in an endless cycle of burnout and stress for the promise of “more money.” 

But it doesn’t have to be this way.  If you find yourself feeling like I did, it’s time to make a change.  It’s time to break free of the rat race and take your life back.  

The reasons why working as an employee is not all it’s cracked up to be:

  • You’re always on the clock: The number one thing I can’t stand about the corporate world, is that you’re always on the clock.  They will tell you in the interview that the job is from 9-5 but that’s more of a hopeful notion. The sad truth is that your job has a habit of routinely infringing upon your personal time.  And your personal life suffers as a result. Add a spouse and a few kids to this scenario and you literally have no time for yourself. 
  • You’re part of the rat race: The rat race is a toxic scene where employees are pitted against each other in an endless cycle of burnout and stress for the promise of “more money.” Which is a huge joke-especially when it’s tax time. 
  • You’re sacrificing your health: Working long hours and skipping meals is a recipe for disaster. If you don’t take care of your health, you won’t be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor–you will be spending it all to help you keep your health later. 
  • You’re missing out on life: When you’re working all the time, you miss out on important events.  You’re so overwhelmed that you feel like you don’t have time to hang out with your friends, read their emails, or even to return a text. You feel like you can barely keep up with the basics of life; it literally feels unmanageable and, if you’re like me, when life gets unmanageable, you don’t do anything well. 
  • You’re in a never-ending cycle: Once you get sucked into the corporate world, it’s really hard to break free. It feels like you’re working all the time.  All the while they continue to tempt you with more money—the so called “light at the end of the tunnel”—but in the end, the light is just a train headed toward you called burnout. 
  • Burnout:   If the previous five reasons weren’t enough to convince you that working as an employee isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, here is another reason.  And it’s possibly the most important: burnout is a real problem in corporate life.  For me, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. 
  • Taxes:  I’ll never forget the first time I paid taxes as a corporate slave.  I was shocked to find out that after watching so much of my paycheck going to social security, taxes, and the like, that I still owed money to Uncle Sam.  Anytime you have to use a credit card to pay taxes, there’s a problem. 

In the end, the corporate world is a brutal, never-ending cycle, of fresh-blood in, crush them, and spit them out.  I even bounced around though a few jobs in search of “work-life balance.” But I could never find it.  Then it dawned on me: why have work-life balance when you can just have life balance? 

It’s time to break free from the corporate rat race. There are better ways to make money online and work less, so you can spend more time doing the things that really matter.  So, if you’re feeling like I did, it’s time to break free and take your life back!  But finding that perfect niche for you can be hard to do.  You may not know where to start, and you will have to sift through a plethora of bogus get rich quick schemes to find that golden opportunity. 

Why I Started this Blog

I started this blog to help myself and others find a way out of the corporate claws so that we can all get back to doing what we’re best at.  Being ourselves and living life.  I believe life is a gift, and you should be able to spend that gift any way you like.  Sure, you need money—we all do, but there must be another way to make money that doesn’t require us to trade our most precious resource for it—time.  

So, if you’re ready to break free and find the life of your dreams, join me on my blog! I’ll help you sift through all the nonsense out there and find that golden opportunity that’s right for you. Whether it be affiliate marketing or some other avenue, together we can find a way to make money online so that we can all stop trading time for money.