Make the pie higher

My pie is too small, my pie is too small, oh woe-is-me, my pie is too small.

Back at the end of April my non-paid-work time started to be eaten away by my job. The pie that had been so neatly, if a little haphazardly, divided between work (about a third), family & friends (about a quarter), blog (about a fifth), and other (the rest), was suddenly too small.

At first I didn't think too much about it, I just let the work portion gnaw away where-ever it could. Family and friends were the primary losers in the first six weeks or so, until my partner called me on it and I realised what I was doing. Since then I've taken the extra hours for the job out of time for this here blog and the sundry other bits and pieces that is necessary to maintain a life. (Don't ask me how long it's been since I went to the dentist.)

This modest temporary promotion is creating work-life imbalance for me. I love the job; the actual work, the challenge of working differently and learning new skills, and the people I work with. But I want to be able to do more than just eke out a life around work's demands.

So last week, when they started talking about making this temporary position permanent I made it clear I probably wouldn't apply for the job, due to the hours. Noises were made that the issue of the extra hours, and the accompanying inability to take leave, will be sorted. Partly I just need to wait for a colleague to come back from time off (she's been having an awful year and it's not her fault). Which means I can forsee a proper return to the blog in the near future. My pieces of pie will hopefully jumble back towards their pre-promotion places.

But not entirely. I've decided to do the dividing a little differently. First and foremost I won't be blogging on the weekends. This will be time that is largely sacrosanct for whanau, friends and other stuff. Inevitably this will also mean I'll be blogging less in general, as I often used to write content on the weekends and schedule it ahead. No more.

I'm also likely to be present in the comments on other blogs a lot less. Well a lot less than I was two months ago. It would be hard to be around less frequently than in July.

And I think when I blog I'm going to be more focused on saying something, writing something, than putting together the bits and pieces like our monthly blog stats, tweaking the site etc.

Maybe in the future I'll be able to return to that kind of stuff. In the meantime, until I can inflate the pie, this'll have to do.