When Isobel asked if I wanted to bike down to the water to watch the sunset, I hesitated. Doing some quick mental math, I took an inventory of the work I had left to do.
It was... well, it was kind of a lot.
It wasn't uncommon for my mom to be working late into the night when I was growing up. At the time, I didn't think anything of it.
I may have gotten home from school before she got home from work, but she was always there to take me to football practice or to a little league game. When we got home, we'd both land on the couch. We'd usually throw on the Red Sox game before her laptop and my schoolwork came out. She was a software engineer at a globally-known company for over 30 years. For much of my childhood, she commuted from the Boston suburbs to work in-person. She'd still open her laptop from the couch at night. As I got older, it just became something I knew that she was passing the baton to the team in India, who were just starting their day, as she was winding hers down. Mom never opened her laptop when we went camping in the summers, though. Or when we'd go skiing in the winter.
And I never once heard her complain about work.
Ever.
I think that's probably where I learned that there are times in life when you'll work late. It wasn't until I got older that I began to appreciate the hidden tradeoff my mom had mastered—how blocking time to live your life is important, and that it may also be the very reason you end up working late.
So, when Isobel asked me tonight if I wanted to go watch the sunset, I started calculating the work I had left to do. Before I finished calculating, however, I caught myself. Then, I just said yes without thinking, closed my laptop, and went to go enjoy the hell out of a summer sunset by the lake in Vermont.
It's not uncommon for me to work late.
But I'm trying to be better about blocking time for life.
Do you block time for life?
onward.
For more on this daily column and The MAP Year Project, read the backstory here. And if you know someone who'd appreciate this, pass it along.