In this week’s episode, Crys and JP talk all about work life balance. From balancing day jobs, partners, kiddos, vacations, and everything in between, they discuss what methods they use to still find time to write.
Show Notes
Wide for the Win by Mark Leslie Lefebvre
Transcript
Crys: Hello, friends, and welcome to the Write Away Podcast. This is episode 49, and we are recording this on June 24th, 2021. I’m Crys Cain with my cohost…
JP: JP Rindfleisch.
Crys: How has your writing week?
JP: It was a treat, a wonderful treat. I ended up going to a wedding on last Friday and hurt my knee. So that was fun.
Crys: You have to share why you hurt your knee.
JP: No. Okay, fine. I dance, regardless of if I have alcohol or not, as if I have no bones, and usually when I used to do this, I was much younger and apparently I’m old now. So that was a fun treat to learn. Anyways I injured myself and it is slowly getting better which has prevented me from doing some things, but it hasn’t prevented me from writing.
So I’ve been working on a couple of things, including the villain short story, and I am in a race to get that thing in. And I am editing right now and I’m hoping to get it done within the next six days.
Crys: I need to write mine. And I was looking over, cause Sacha’s posted, Hey, you have a week left if you’re going to submit. I’m like, oh, damn. And then I’m looking over mine and I’m like, is this villainy enough? I’m like, regardless, I still need to write it whether it fits or not. I just need to write it.
JP: Yeah. And if for some crazy reason I either don’t make the deadline or it doesn’t get in, which that wouldn’t be a crazy reason because it may not be good enough, who knows, but yeah, I have ideas for where it could go other than that cause it’s a weird and fun story. So I’m having fun with it.
Crys: I have been sick, so it has been very low key. And yesterday I was at this point because I was literally not able to get up at my four o’clock in the morning.
Because the kid had been up crying from like one to two or two-thirty, cause he’s sick and he’s, ” Mom, I’m so sad.” So I knew I wasn’t going to get up at four. I tried to sleep in as late as I could. And then I just had so much stomach pain and I was like, should I push through and get work done regardless?
I was like, I’m not sure if this is one of those times where you’re like, this is temporary, working is not going to affect this. And so I’m just either going to lay around and it’s not going to help, or I’m going to work and it’s also not going to hurt, or is this one of those times where I just need to back the fuck off and rest?
It was like, I don’t know which this is. It’s borderline. And then I got like a homemade ginger ale, so it’s got lots of the good fermenty bacteria and it helped settle my stomach so much. And I was talking to my roommate’s girlfriend like, oh, we should get Seth one cause he’s also sick.
And I went back downstairs to drink more of my ginger ale because my stomach was upset again. And it was gone. I was like, where’d my drink go? And he’s, ” Oh, she told me to drink it.” I was like, no! And I like had a meltdown. And that was the point at which I realized this is one of the resting days.
JP: Yeah.
Crys: If you’re having a meltdown over a drink not being in the fridge, it’s one of the resting days. And my meltdowns are very quiet. I just basically fold it over and my brain stopped being able to process, like I don’t have an external meltdown. It’s all, everything inside just goes to nothingness and melt.
JP: Well, it’s good that you recognize that. At the day job, I get very angry at people who come to work sick. And I think that’s something that when you work from home, you have that leeway to be a little sick and still work. But like when your body is ill, you gotta rest, you can’t just push through it.
And I know that a lot of people love to push through, but who are you trying to prove? You know what I mean? It makes more sense to just rest. Take your time, heal up, and come back to it when you’re at a better state of mind because I’m a very big proponent about if you are sick, you need to take time for it because I absolutely despise it when people at the day job come in and they are viewed as heroes for coming and being sick.
And I’m like, no, you’re coming in and getting everyone else sick. And you’re doing like 50% of your work. Just leave and come back when you’re better.
Crys: Classic American white culture.
JP: It makes me so mad.
Crys: I don’t know if it’s exclusive to America.
JP: True. But the fun part is when you work from home and when you work for yourself, it is much harder to recognize when those cutoff points are, because I think it’s a little different, obviously, if you can put in a little work, but it’s good that you recognized it. So that was the sleep day.
Crys: Indeed. And this ties in so lovely, unintentional, wonderful segue because our topic today is what are our routines and how does it give us work-life balance or lack thereof? What is your routine right now, JP? I know you’ve talked about it quite a bit, but yeah.
JP: Yeah, so I have a very solid one and a half to two hours in the morning that I just strictly dedicate to writing.
I try to get up every day at about five in the morning, give myself about, I say about, and then I’m going to say 17 minutes.
Crys: Exactly 17 minutes.
JP: I always notice it’s about 5:17 when I like actually get to the computer because I have to take care of the dogs, and I don’t drink coffee until after writing, but I do drink a large sum of water just to become alive.
But yeah, then I have those one and a half to two-ish hours of writing. And that is it for strict routine in terms of writing for Monday through Friday. When I didn’t have a bad knee, I would then exercise. Now that I have a bad knee, during the workweek I obviously just prepare for work and then I go and do that thing.
And then anything else is just free and up in the air. On the weekends, I try to do a little more, but I also have some more meetings and stuff on the weekend for writing things, because I love to make myself busy.
Crys: Monday through Friday, I, and this is new, I just finished my first full week of it last week. And that was to wake up at four o’clock every morning and get started working. And that’s to provide a consistency to my days that having a young child disrupts because he doesn’t wake up at exactly the same time every morning.
And before I had him full time, when his dad was in town, we were switching every other night. So my days were not the same. So I’d been thinking about doing four o’clock in the morning, like waking up consistently at four for a while. Cause normally the kid wakes up at six and provide me a pretty consistent, like I get up at four and I have at least an hour because he wakes up between five and seven, normally between 5:30 and 6:30, but at least an hour of time to myself. Anyways, so I started that and that’s been great. I try to focus that time on creative work only, but on days like today, where I’ve had two days of disrupted focus because of feeling ill, I was like, there are things on my plate that I need to take off my plate before my creative brain has enough space to actually work.
So this morning was very admin focused and just getting some of those small items off my plate. But my schedule really is, wake up at four, work for as long as I can until the kiddo wakes up. I don’t generally have coffee until somewhere between six and eight, some days I forget and then I wonder why I have a headache and that’s problematic.
Those are the few days when I’ll have a coffee past noon. And I try and work on things throughout the day. If I have any meetings they’re in the earlier afternoon. And we have our weekly recordings, J and I have our weekly recordings for the TASM Podcast, and I don’t generally work on the weekends.
That’s my schedule. I really haven’t figured out with doing the first thing in the morning if I want to hard-ass on myself in the middle of the days about what needs to happen. I don’t think so because I’m moving into this adventure van life thing. And I really think that most of my days are going to be two to four hours of work, no more, because I’ll be living in close quarters with my kid.
And he gets really antsy when mom’s working all the time and he can see that I’m doing that and not paying attention to him. So two to four hours a day is my goal for work in life. That’s my end game goal anyways, or zero work and just all play that happens to be productive. But that’s where I’m at with schedules.
Yeah. And then I go to bed at the same time every night. That’s important.
JP: Yeah, I try that too. It does not work on the weekends for me. But it’s fascinating because that’s the life that I would love to have at some point, it’s the life that I’m like striving for. And I recognize that as someone who has yet to really make the big leap into author world, you almost have to do this like double routine work which is really exciting and fun. But as much sarcasm as I can put in that, for me, it is a really good outlet to look at a way to be creative and work outside of the day job. And even though it can sometimes come out to be 10, 11, 12 hours a day of what we would call “work,” the writing part never feels like work at the moment. And so it’s almost like I can get a preview of what that life looks like, but then I have to go back to the day job.
Crys: Yeah. I was never able to pull the double shift. Like I did write for years and years, but never able to do so consistently while I had the day job, because it drained so much energy from me. And so I’m just in awe of anyone who manages to do both. And maybe you have found this, but I think that people who learn that they should only give 80% of themselves to their day job, like maybe they’ve unlocked that. Cause I think I gave too much to my day job that I didn’t have to.
JP: So that’s actually really funny because I left my previous job because we were a startup company, and even though I was hired on for 40 hours a week, it quickly turned into 65, 80 hours a week. And I knew that if I wanted to do something with writing, that I could not commit to those sorts of hours and write.
And so I have become very strict about my time and how much I give it to someone that I’m working for. So I understand that there are certain times where you may need to work an extra hour here or there, especially if, because I’m salaried, I’m not hourly pay. But at the same aspect, I have been very clear with my manager about I work eight hours a week, if you need me to work more, obviously I can, but these are the hours I work and that’s it.
Crys: You mean eight hours a day, not eight hours a week.
JP: Yeah, eight hours a day. I got really excited and was daydreaming. Of course I have a fantastic manager that I work for but finding the right job that allows you that room and that space has really changed how I view working for the day job, because I commit to those eight hours to working for that job, but then I cut it off. And yes, I have a work phone. Yes, I’m reachable if needed, but it is very well-established that I’m not slacking, I’m just very strict about my time. So what I highly recommend that for anyone with a day job is think about the hours that you spend and how that may look. And the reason I say that is because, especially in other countries, and this is the fantastic part about working for an international company, is in other countries, if you work more than your allotted hours, you’re not necessarily viewed as a hero, you’re viewed as someone who’s not able to complete their job within the allotted time that you were given.
That was one thing that made me think about, who am I doing this for? Because realistically you’re doing it for yourself and you’re doing it because of a continuous belief that we need to work more and more for nothing, to be honest, because if you’re salaried you don’t get any more.
Crys: Oh 100%.
My last, I guess my only post-college work job, was very toxic and they did expect you to give 120% of time and effort. And the thing that I have learned far too late is that when you show yourself to be really fast, you don’t get any benefit from that. You just get more work.
JP: Yup. That still happens to me.
Crys: I was like, maybe I should apply that to myself as my own boss.
JP: And it’s such a weird and awkward thing to say, because of course you want to give it your all, but if you give it your all consistently, you will burn out because your all is never going to be a hundred percent.
It’s going to be a hundred percent plus a little more. And so I really work on ways of finding systems that make it easier, which is usually why I’ve become the go-to for making systems that are faster and quicker for people, but I’m always upfront. And I almost always double the amount of time it’s going to take.
Just because I’d rather, I guess in that sense, over-deliver but I’m setting those parameters of this will take me X amount of time, period. Yeah. Super fun.
Crys: Yeah. And do you ever feel overwhelmed with having to carry the work job and trying to push forward the writing at the same time?
JP: So that is why I have the routine because the routine is the way for me to put a little bit more control in the window that I want for writing, because the thing is, at the end of the day, I want to feel like I have made a step farther in writing and because I have that want and that drive and that desire, that’s what brings me to writing every day in the morning.
That may not be the same for everyone. Some people it may be getting writing done in a week. Obviously, everyone’s schedule is different. I’m just lucky enough that my schedule works that in the mornings, I don’t have children that are screaming at me. I just have a bird and I can just cover her. Cause you know, you can’t cover a child with a blanket and hope that everything’s fine. But that’s the part that keeps me going is having that routine. And then anything outside of that routine is just extra. And I can always drop that off if I need to, depending on the day. But even when I feel the most I don’t want to go to the day job, it still takes way more for me to not feel like I want to do the writing.
Crys: And what about family time? Like you feel like you get enough of it?
JP: That’s the best is my partner is not a morning person, and I am a morning person. And I think if there’s ever a point where I can either cut back on the day job or focus fully on writing, I may shift to be a little bit later in the day, but ultimately, like my partner does not get up until 11, or sometimes it’s a little earlier, but that definitely gives me the space to do the writing. And then later in the day if there’s time, if he wants to focus on his photography or something like that, then I can focus on writing, but that’s our time. So I definitely cherish that as well. And I try not to step on that with writing, and I just respect that is our time to do whatever. And then like, whenever I go to sleep, if he wants to work on something else, then yeah.
Crys: Yeah. I keep my weekends very solidly kiddo focused. And I even build in like my personal rest times to when the kiddo is with childcare, because when he’s home, like I do want to be available and focused on him. And granted like normally, like when he gets home in the afternoon, he gets a little bit of Minecraft time. And so I have time to just sit and read or watch TikToks or whatever. But yeah, and then once it hits dinner time, like I have such a strict schedule for our dinner, nighttime routines, and then like lights off at eight o’clock and he and I are asleep by nine.
Yeah. Which is important with the getting up early for me.
JP: Yeah, I think for me sometimes I’ll have to negotiate, at least with myself, doing a little bit more writing in the evenings, especially like if there’s a deadline, like a short story that’s due in six days, or something along those lines, where I need to fit that time in, then I will.
That’s why I only have that morning routine as a concrete time. And everything else, like I said, is just fair game and whenever I can grab it.
Crys: I have old guilt voices in my brain that will occasionally tell me that I didn’t get enough done during the day. And so after the kid falls asleep, I should get up and work, but I know that will mess up my morning routine.
So I’m very strict for myself and don’t let myself work once it gets within an hour of, Hey, you need to be asleep by now.
JP: I no longer do word count, which was a surprise to me. But when I realized it, like half of the stuff that I do is either editing, which I personally don’t think that should be related to word count because it’s more about the quality of what you’re producing, or it’s in the creation stage, figuring things out in which, yet again, I don’t want to feel rushed when I’m trying to figure certain aspects out. Only really when it’s drafting am I cognizant about words, but I think ever since I stopped doing word count, and just said between five and seven if I’m at my computer and I’m doing work, regardless of if I get nothing in or if I get several thousand words in, I was going to say pages and I’m like that’s insane.
As long as I’m there, then I feel accomplished regardless of what it was.
Crys: I have talked before about my done list. That helps me a lot. And I go back and forth between whether I’m actually actively tracking word count or not. I did a little bit at the beginning of this year and then I stopped doing it again.
And I actually had to train myself to stop doing word count because when I was no longer able to keep up high word counts, it became a very negative thing, a very negative measurement. But there have been times where it’s been very helpful for me to figure out, what is the best circumstance for me to write in? Am I keeping onto aggressive goals that I have the energy to meet at that point? So that’s one of those tools that I pick up and put down as needed. For sure.
JP: I’m curious on what you do when you go on vacation?
I know you’re giving me that grumpy face, because I know what you’re going to say.
Crys: Work. I work less, but I work. So here’s a wild thing about me on vacation. I wake up earlier than I do normally. So when I was waking up between 5:30 and 6:30, so I was waking up at I don’t know, two or three. This morning, I woke up at two, and so I started work at three and I’m a lazy workaholic. Like really, that’s what it comes down to, is that compared to some people, I probably work a lot because it’s my default.
Maybe that’s not even the best descriptor, but I was like, but I feel like I don’t do a lot because I’ve trained myself out of full functioning. That’s not the right phrase either, but like, I’ve trained myself out of a hundred percent mode. And a lot of that has been my body and brain has demanded it of me through burnout. But yeah, when I go on vacation, this is honestly because I hate pressuring myself to a deadline.
I haven’t yet built a really good system for pulling things together ahead of time so that whatever is done that needs to be done within a week is ready and handled and automated. I’m getting there. And so there are often a few things like recording podcasts that I’m just like, oh, that’s enjoyable for me, it doesn’t take a lot of time, I’m just going to keep that in my schedule. We might move it around, arrange it to a better day, but I’m still going to do that. But of course, if I find myself up at two, three o’clock in the morning…
TikToks or writing, the choice. And I read a lot, but yeah, I still work. I don’t really know how to not work. Not very good at it.
JP: I think it’s fair.
Crys: Awkward, long silence.
JP: So for vacation, at one point I used to respond to like work related things, like day job related things. I don’t do that anymore. That is done. But when it comes to writing, I still get enjoyment out of that. And yes, of course I get enjoyment out of my day job, but not in the same sense of writing.
And so there are aspects of writing that I just don’t give up when I go on vacation. But I know that the routine times are gone because we have plans. We have things that we want to do. I can’t expect that my partner is just going to sleep until noon on a vacation because they’re not. This is not going to happen.
So I know that the time is variable, but when the time is found, then I’m just like, oh, I can use it for writing and be all excited and do that.
Crys: Yeah, I think what I am getting better at with vacations is letting go of the expectation of work. Because vacations in the past have just been, oh, I’ll go a new place and do new fun things, and also work. And that’s a very digital nomadic kind of approach to things. And it really is one that I’m comfortable with. I go back and forth on whether it is particularly healthy for me. I think that when you’re passionate about what you do, then you don’t need to have boundaries to not work on yourself.
But whether that is particularly healthy for me or not, that’s just something that I evaluate a lot. And letting go of the expectations that I have to get anything particular done while I’m on vacation, I think is something that I am getting better at. So then you can lean into the joy of what you’re doing, which is something that I’ve really been leaning on a lot is rebuilding that joy in my life.
JP: Yeah, I think that’s a really good way to explain it.
Crys: Now, I feel like we ought to have a bit of a sidebar on this balance issue with family members who are not supportive. And because I have had experience with that in a weird way. My ex-husband was very supportive of me pursuing this, of doing the work. He was not supportive of how I chose to spend my time. And this was a long argument for us because as I got deeper into burnout, it took me far longer to do things. And therefore I had to spend more time working to get the basic things that I needed to get done. And that left little time for us, little time for whatever.
Looking back now, I realize I probably should have said, Hey, I do need financial support. Like it’s time for you to get a job. And I think he would have been open to that, but I always left that up in his court. If you want a job, you can get one. I don’t care. And still absolutely feel like that that’s fine. But I probably, and I just wasn’t capable of examining this at that point, but I probably would have been a lot better off being like, I can’t carry all the financial support right now. And I think that if you are having an imbalance with family and yourself, you have to examine a lot, and it’s going to be really difficult. Because when there’s a conflict between two things that you care about like that, it’s really hard to tell what the actual problems are.
Sometimes you have a spouse who doesn’t support the work you do at all and doesn’t believe in you. That’s really problematic. That needs fucking therapy. Sometimes it’s a disagreement on how things are handled or it’s external stressors that are bringing a lot in, and there’s no one answer to that.
And again, therapy might be a really great way to dig in and figure out what are the actual issues. It’s not a cure all cause no therapist is perfect, but it’s definitely a really good tool.
JP: Yeah, I think communication is key on that aspect. Cause for my situation I am the current, financial person, only financial person. Cause my partners suffers from mental health and we’ve both agreed that regardless of how long it takes that we need focus on that and to get that in a stable place before we pursue anything in which he may feel like he can financially contribute.
And to me, that was the most important thing, because for our situation I felt like that was something he never got the chance to explore before we were together. And I felt like he needed that time to figure that out, regardless of how long it took. And I have come to the acceptance that I don’t care how long it takes. If it takes forever, that’s fine. Because to me, money is not important. It is just a vehicle to survive in this current world. So that’s why I’ve also accepted that I don’t know how long I would be working in this day job in comparison to writing.
And I’ve just accepted that I want to pursue this dream, but I know that I am the financial pillar because of the agreements that we’ve made. I think that was the most important thing was having that communication. And then I’ve actually gone to some of the therapies that he’s had and we’ve just discussed a couple of things and that has helped tremendously because I do not suffer in the same way he does with mental health. And so I didn’t have that perspective, and it really wasn’t until I went to a couple of therapy sessions that I recognized what the difference was. And that was just so eye opening to me, and it helped me realize how life is perceived differently through other people’s eyes.
So I definitely think communication therapy is like super important for everyone.
Crys: Yeah, and you can be great talkers and both be really good at ‘ I feel’ statements and still not be able to fucking communicate without a third party sometimes.
JP: I will admit early on in our relationship. I definitely used the ‘I feels’ and that was BS. Definitely needed that third party conversation just to get a better understanding.
Crys: Yeah. So how balanced do you feel that you are right now?
JP: In between work and life, I also have to put work writing and life, because writing at this moment is not work in terms of the day job because I do not get financial from writing because at the moment I’m not published.
So in that sense, that is “hobby” until it becomes work. So with a balance of that, I would say, wow, this is a hard question. Thanks.
I feel like I’m evenly distributed. Maybe the most strain is on life because if you break up everything and the whole like industrial stupid concept, you have eight hours work, eight hours recreation, eight hours of sleep.
And so obviously I have the eight hours of work, I have the eight hours of sleep, and then the two that are fighting are writing and life or relationships. So off of those balances, I would be a little unbalanced. How about you? Why don’t you divulge all your secrets?
Crys: I don’t think I’m super balanced at the moment.
But I honestly don’t know if that is the part of my brain that tells me I should be doing more versus what I actually need. I don’t actually know. I know that there is a lot more that I would like to be getting done. I just don’t know if I actually should be doing that much. I really like this new pattern of getting up at four and getting to work seems to be working really well for me.
It’s really realigning my focus and it frees up a lot of the day for life things as needed, even if that’s just a fucking nap. So I don’t know. There’s part of me that feels like I might look back on this time and be like, yo, you were doing great. Like you were solid. There’s part of me that thinks I might look back and be like, you were being a fucking lazy ass, get shit done.
I don’t know, really. So I’m in a very inchoate state of figuring out balance. And I keep thinking forward to what is life going to be like on the road? What kind of balance do I want there? Because I know that if I am working too much, it’s going to be miserable. Because I will have my friend Priscilla with me. I will have the kiddo. And the balance will be off. There’ll need to be interaction. We will need a different kind of system. And so as I am translating what I’m doing now to what I want to be doing then, I’m thinking about what’s workable and what’s not. And granted, there are things I just won’t be able to figure out until we’re in it.
But I don’t know. I feel like getting in like my ideal two hours in the morning and then, especially when we’re not in super-hot areas and where I can get AC because my brain melts with the heat and stops working, if I can get two hours in a Starbucks in the afternoon I feel like I would get so much done and that’s just four hours a day.
And I feel like that would be such a healthy balance. And then so much of my time can just be spent on playing in like creeks and shit and finding like tiny frogs. I don’t know. I’m really excited about that.
JP: That’s the thing that I think we’re missing. I think part of it was just with coming now out of COVID but realizing that we were both people that want to go and explore, but we don’t do that enough. And I think part of it is just after work and writing, sometimes I’m just like blehhh. But I always realize that regardless of how blehhh I feel, if we go out into nature somewhere, like after I always feel better, and so I think it’s just that initial leap to go do that. But that’s the piece that I would say in regard to the life aspect that I definitely want to do more of is just be out in nature more because I feel like that fuels everything else.
Crys: Yeah. Nature nerds.
JP: Nature nerds.
Crys: I have a question for our listeners and that is, what do you think your ideal balance is and are you living it?
JP: Live them dreams.
Crys: Ba dum! All right. Don’t forget, we have a Patreon. We are going to be reading Wide for the Win by Mark Leslie Lefebvre and discussing it for book club this month.
That’s coming up soon. So if you join our Patreon, you’ll get notifications about that, as well as our weekly updates and thoughts about previous episodes, what our planning is going forward, and bonus episodes when we have them. Thanks so much.
JP: See you later.
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