Everyone I know has too much work to do, but not enough time to do it in and not enough energy to do it with.
Everyone I know could do with a decent holiday right now, but having the time to organise it, and the resources to pay for it – that’s a whole other question.
My facebook feed is full of exhausted people struggling on as best they can.
I took a day off yesterday. A whole one. I’ve been doing weekends for about nine months now, but it is hard getting more than 2 days back to back. Today I have to run to catch up on everything i didn’t do because I took a day off.
If you’re working multiple jobs, or your contract doesn’t have proper hours, getting and affording breaks is hard. If you’re self employed, how do you say no to paying work, even when you really, desperately need to rest? Because there’s no knowing when that paying work will dry up. Trying to get ahead so that if things go terribly wrong, you don’t fall into debt.
All that stands between most households and total financial disaster is the next paycheck, assuming it lands.
Being tired does not improve your judgement, or your efficiency. It makes everything harder. Being tired is a stress on the body, and body stresses increase risks of illness, exacerbate conditions and cause mental health problems.
Everyone I know is tired.
This really, really needs to change.
Security has to be more important than job flexibility. There have to be safety nets that people can count on. The role of rest in health – mental and physical –needs taking seriously. Illness is expensive, it isn’t efficient either.
Druid Life 
Yep. I started a new job last month and I’m exhausted. My Druid practice has dwindled as I just don’t have the mental energy to work on it when I get home from work, and weekends are filled with household chores. Given that the situation is so hard to change, what I want to know is how to work within and around it, to reclaim the time I do have?
No easy answers there, if I come up with anything, I will blog.
I agree so much. I wish the Western world could just work 4 days a week, giving us 3 for gardening, family time, & just resting. Or do it like the French do: siestas every day after lunch 😊
now, that would be a solution!
This society is so driven by the perceived need to consume. The need to consume useless rubbish that we don’t even need. If we as a society concentrated on what we needed rather than just wanted on a whim then working life could perhaps be different. All many people seem to care about it having the latest iPhone, tablet, fashion etc without any consideration of the true cost in human terms. I am so tired of it all.
I blame the constant bombardment of adverts and the way we are sold dissatisfaction alongside the idea that a new magic item will make it all better – which if course it never does, and you have to run after the next new thing instead. We need cultural evolution, or revolution.
cultural revolution! yes I suspect climate change might help us along out of the consumerist pit of oblivion. The earth and the human race are being systematically consumed, because everything has been made up for grabs, everything precious converted into a means to make profit. We are under constant attack by the ideological system of materialism and neo capitalism and it is at the level now that what is now a thorough violation from work to home has become normalised. This is quite disturbing when you think about it.
Yes indeed.
I think one thing we frequently fail to consider is we are our own worst enemies so often, we work so many hours not just to cover the things we need but also things we want, we are all sat here now on the internet, we are either working extra hours each week to cover the cost of that be in home wifi or phone contract, we pay for computers, phones to communicate partly because society requires it more frequently but also because we want to. When I was off work with my spinal surgeries I had to cut back on things but I was always so grateful that I got the help I needed to cover the basics, I have a friend in the States who has to work to cover the cost of his chemo treatment as he has lived too long with the illness for the insurance companies liking and they will no longer cover it. The main thing I learnt from it all was that it is my responsibility to to ensure I have work /life balance, to realise that if I could not achieve that then I needed to look at what I was working to pay for in relation to what I needed to thrive. Something as simple as stopping my weekly pop into the coffee shop equalled one hour less I needed to work, it is easy to blame society but are we not responsible for our own lives, it is to an extent about priorities once you have covered the basics like food and a roof over your head, heating and light etc then you have the choice whether you what you want to work to cover the extras, my daughter was mortified when I pointed out to her cable, broad band and even a TV are not actually necessities for survival.
Absolutely, although it is much harder to make these calls when exhausted and bombarded with adverts. It’s important to pause and assess – yes, I have the computer and the internet, but no TV, I work from home so no car and no commuting costs, and no time sat in traffic, being traffic…