By Lila Ojha
Reviewed by Tabu Butagira
When people engage in work for different purposes, they always have some kind of difficulties to balance between work and personal life.
From my personal experience, when I started to work outside
home, I had to make sure I fulfilled both my family and
other social responsibilities.
Being a mother of two, I always had difficulty to work
within the time frame. For that reason I was not able to
continue with my first job as an assistant at a media
outlet, and left it. However, I still wanted a paid job
outside home. As such, I decided to utilize my leisure time
to take training to gain additional skills.
When my kids were of age, I enrolled them at a childcare
center to free me up for salaried employment. It was not
easy leaving my lovely toddlers at the
Montessori
School. As a result, my mind while at work remained
preoccupied with the safety, health and welfare of my babies
while in the care of a stranger. I realized that emotional
and work satisfaction are totally different. It was ironic
that I had a job, but suddenly couldn’t give fuller meaning
of love to the very children I so much love. So, that
feelings really drove me to question my work/life
balance.
To me, work/life balance means managing personal interest,
family and friends and everyday work.Thus we are more
productive when we combine our jobs with our personal
interests. This will automatically increase our energy level
and help to maintain the rest of our relations.
My earlier interest was to be a radio anchor and I was on
the right path to fulfill my desire. That motivated me to
maintain family life and personal life.
We can’t escape from our family and social life. So if we
make sure our responsibility to help our family and society
even on small scale, that give us more energy and
satisfaction at our work.
To me, as a media person, I usually don’t have time to spend
with family and friends, although they are not complaining
about that. I guess the reason maybe I often spend breakfast
and dinner time with family and, at least once or twice a
month, I spend time eating out with family. And I often
share details of work schedule with them.This has helped me
to keep my family understanding of my work, settled and
together.
Equally, I have some like-minded friends and relatives. I
always make sure to call them at least once or twice a month
and share and up date each other about activities and ideas.
Similarly, I attend neighborhood invitations
as whenever possible, which may seems not so
important, but it helps me to be social and it’s fun outside
of work.
I have also read articles about
work/ life balance. I got similar and some different definitions about
it. Although the conclusion was almost same: That as
a human beings, we need to find a middle ground and
means to be a part of society within our busy work life.