Work and play

My Boss was talking yesterday about wondering what he will do to maintain his social networks when he retires in about three years’ time. Realising that he gets a lot of enjoyment from daily interactions with his colleagues at work, he was a little worried that he would be at his wits’ end not knowing what to do with himself when he no longer has to come to work. It’s true that work plays a very big part in workers’ lives – I can’t think of another routine in my life that I spend five days out of every week working at (no pun intended). If I’m not careful I can also spend a lot of my non-work hours thinking about it.

Anyway the conversation somehow led to one of my colleagues telling me that I wouldn’t have any problems with social networks because all I would need is a computer – I was quite surprised that she had that perception of me, as I don’t really talk much about what I do on the computer outside of work. (I don’t like being jeered at, even in a friendly way, when I mention blogs, or MMORPGs, so I don’t normally talk about such things at work – I seem to be strangely oversensitive in this area as I often set myself up to be teased in other areas and don’t seem to mind!) This particular colleague plays the role of the Bullshit Radar in our team – she tends to just observe all our silly interactions and verbal venting during meetings and then when we’ve worn ourselves out (or worked ourselves up into a state), calmly manages to summarise the problem and what we can do to solve it, without buying into all the ego, whinging and excess of emotion that can get displayed at meetings. I really admire this ability. Maybe I’ll develop it when I grow up. (I’ve very lucky in that I have workmates I actually like! Unlike Mickey in California.)

I wonder, what would I do with myself to occupy my days if I didn’t have the whole work routine to take up the majority of my week? It is true that The Computer is a great tool for social interaction, but I find that after spending x hours in front of it every day it is still good to actually talk to other people, face to face. I don’t seem to have many hobbies or interests that need the involvement of other people. Reading. Collecting fountain pens. Computer games. Maintaining this blog. Other people’s input usually improves my enjoyment of these but is not essential. (The joys of being an introvert!)

But then again, why am I pondering this topic anyway? It’s not as if I have the luxury of being able to retire anytime soon, and who knows what the world will be like in 25 years??

Categories: work-life-balance, meaning-of-life, navel-gazing