Member-only story
Shattering the Stigma
Blurring the line between personal and professional
I am my work, and my work is me.
That sentence used to scare me. My whole first year of work experience, I worried about not being my own person outside of my work. Although an office job, it was an at-home office job. I had to organize myself in my one-bedroom apartment, figuring out a way to manage the shift.
I used tricks that, during the pandemic, became quite popular — changing into “real” clothes, brushing my teeth after breakfast, holding a coffee break and a lunch break throughout the day. I had shifted my work hours from 7 AM to 3 PM. By 4 PM, I’d be on the beach or going for a run, then spend the rest of my afternoon watching either Netflix or reading a book. Each day I was eager to split my work self from my personal self.
I wasn’t happy.
I felt as if I was constantly trying to balance two different aspects of myself. I was allergic to talking about work in my free time. At the same time, I was in a phase of self-discovery. I was living alone, had a “big-girl” job and was working on self-improvement. Leaving college, I had gained plenty of experience. Now I wanted to use certain bits and pieces, like yoga, reading, writing and meditating, to shape myself. To do this, something needed to shift.
Loving my job
To no longer feel a strong urge for this divide between work and personal projects, I had to take on a new outlook.
I discussed this with my mom, who’s also my boss. I wasn’t sure how to deal with this internal divide, and mom was an experienced work-life balancer. She’s been doing it for the past 27 years. She shared some of her valuable habits with me; the one that stuck most was to go with the flow. It sounds so simple, although practicing it is much less so. I asked for a more concrete example. My mom/boss came with the advice of moving through my day with more fluidity rather than in my regular, staccato manner. If I would allow myself to take my time, maybe go to the beach in the afternoon and do some work afterward. Read in the morning and start work a little later. When we let the workday flow and intertwine more with our daily activities, it feels less stressful and, in return, gives us more…
