Another anniversary at my place of employment has recently passed. It was a big one: year number 5. Kind of like turning 30 or 40 -- both of which I have yet to experience, but TV has told me that they're big occasions like one's "sweet 16".
I think about it a lot. Considering that my life revolves around it, trying to not think about it takes more effort. Hard not to. The whole idea of "work" takes up an inordinate amount of my life. Let's throw some numbers around to see what I mean.
The standard vacation allotment where I am is 3 weeks per year or 15 days. That leaves 49 weeks of the year where 5 out of 7 days of the week are spent at least 8 hours a day at work. Unfortunately, I'm actually obligated to be at work 8.5 hours a day after including lunch. Because my city is one of the most congested in North America, and probably up there on the planet, my commute is 1 to 1.5 hours each way. That's about 2.5 hours a day so 11 hours per day is devoted to getting to and from work, and being at work.
A mere 13 hours remain for me-time. Of those 13 hours, only about 5 of those hours are, hopefully, spent conscious -- more means I'm not sleeping. One of those hours is spent in the morning running around getting ready to work, which leaves 4 hours. Take out half an hour to eat dinner, and there are finally 3.5 hours left of actual me-time. To compensate for this, I sacrifice up to an hour of sleep and then feel terrible the next day, so there are 4.5 hours then.
In summary then, for 49 weeks of the year, and 5 out of 7 days a week, I get to "live" for about 4.5 hours a day. Weekends become catch-up time for things like sleep and everything else that doesn't get done. It's be nice if I actually liked my job. As it stands now, this is really it, huh?
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