I’ve been learning a lot over the past year about what it means to work as a software engineer. What “work-life balance” means to me–and how difficult it is to get there–is my current biggest challenge. I have a great job and a boyfriend that I love, but what does that leave time for? My introverted nature means that most of my social life involves spending time with my boyfriend and my cat, and the occasional excursion to visit my friends, most of whom live at least a little far away.
Spending time with these people means I get to do some of my hobbies: playing video games and tabletop games, watching movies and tv shows, and going hiking and biking. This does not leave me a lot of time for those hobbies I need to do on my own: reading and writing. The main time I have for reading is on my lunch break, and hopefully I will get more time after I switch back to taking the bus to work later this summer. I will occasionally go to a cafe with my boyfriend on one of our “coffee shop dates” where we work on our own personal projects, and this gives me time to write.
Sometimes though, even though I make it all the way to the coffee shop, all I feel like doing is reading. I did this last weekend and started reading the Naruto manga from the beginning, cause I hadn’t read manga in a while (mangapanda.com is awesome, by the way). I thoroughly enjoyed my day and don’t regret it. In the back of my mind though, I feel like I am neglecting my writing–but whether this is my inner critic talking or whether I do actually want to write more often, I don’t know. Lately it’s felt like a chore whenever I don’t have a bit of inspiration or when I feel like doing something else, and this makes me feel like a failure. What kind of writer am I if I can’t push myself through the imaginary “writer’s block”?
My job tires me out. When I get home, all I want to do is chill out, but there’s laundry and dishes and a cat to take care of. When I have housework-free time, it’s most often taken up by things I feel like doing in the moment, which is not often writing. Today is one of those rare days when I feel like it, and it’s not a chore.
As I venture into the adult world, I feel like my priorities are shifting. It’s really hard to let go of what feels like my childhood fantasy of becoming some great, famous writer. I know I don’t have the bandwidth right now to work on that dream to the level I would need to accomplish it. Maybe someday I will be able to. Bit by bit, I know I will keep writing, because I keep coming back to it as my favorite medium for self-expression. Having big dreams is what keeps me going, and I know that deep down I would be devastated if I ever completely gave up those dreams.
Given all of this, I need to find a way to be okay with the minimal time I have available.