Your life is not a bento box.

If you believe in The Myth of Work-Life Separation, you think that your life looks like this:

The Myth of Work-Life Separation.

You believe that your life has friendly little dividers made of lacquer bamboo (or plastic, if you swing that way), and these dividers keep your work life that you hate (the questionable jiggly salad and orange goo) away from the rest of life which you want to be wonderful (delicious rice and fried animal):

But that's not true. We can't really separate our work life and home life. The very idea that there is a "work life" and a "home life" is unrealistic. The stress from work bleeds into your time at home and vice versa is certainly also true.

Real Life

So instead, your life is more like a KFC Famous Bowl. Which advertising tells us looks like this:

But really, life—and the KFC Famous Bowl—looks like this:

Your life's an amorphous blob, all areas bleeding into all areas, with questionable (but delicious) lumps floating here and there.

There's no way to shield the rest of your life from one bad area. It can't be done. The rough area can be dealt with, it can be understand, and it can be integrated, but it can't be cordoned off and treated as if it's not there.

Denial, unfortunately, is not only a river in Egypt, it's also one of the fastest paths to burn-out.

Comments

[Lori]

First... love the visuals on this one.

Second... love the new domain name. I was telling my husband about it when he almost had a coffee-snorting-out-nose moment.

[Lisa Gates]

Yahootie, love this. Best post yet on WLB. I find it deeply satisfying and ironic that I work in a field that doesn't exist.