Essential Baby blogger Joseph Kelly
It dawns on Joseph Kelly that for the work / life balance theory to move from concept to reality, it has to rely on a couple of big assumptions.
A few years ago I stumbled into a job that actually delivers on what it promises with 'work / life balance'. Happily for me, my landing of this job coincided with Susie and I moving house to be just a few short doors away from Susie's mum and a couple of streets from my brother.
It quickly dawned on me that my work and living arrangements had perfectly aligned to allow me to contemplate a concept that many parents had told me was unattainable: home/ life balance.
The home/ life balance concept is simple: you create a balance between your domestic parenting life of cleaning stuff with spit and mentally humming Hot Potato, and your other more fun life of partying all night and producing stunning works of art during the day. Simple.
If Britney Spears can successfully balance being a mum to her two boys while having a vibrant music career and party lifestyle, then Susie and I would find no trouble in being good parents who also get to pursue some outside interests and have a nice meal out once in a while, right?
The logic behind my thinking was pretty foolproof, and centred on the fact that when you are around your kids all you produce is vegemite sandwiches, but once away from the kids you can potentially create anything you like. Elton John and George Michael, for example, have no kids and have made a lot of records.
My mum, on the other hand, had eight kids and never once entered a recording studio. Coincidence? I think not. With extended family offering Susie and I two of life's greatest luxury items, time and space, I was quietly confident that all our ambitions would soon be fulfilled.
A year or so on and the experiment has not exactly worked as I had hoped.
For the home/ life balance theory to move from concept to reality it has to rely on a couple of big assumptions. The first of these is that your extended family have no interests of their own and are therefore more than happy to spend all of their free time minding your kids.
While Jon Voight might be happy to drop everything anytime Angelina and Brad call to say they need a baby-sitter so they can make a movie, I have learnt that my family do not sit around at home desperately waiting for me to invite them to look after the kids. They are, however, more than happy to help out where they can, when they can. This, unfortunately, rules me out of staring in a six month film shoot in the Philippines for Apocalypse Now 2: The Boat Ride Home.
The second big assumption is that the only thing between you and artistic/ sporting/ political/ social greatness is your kids. Even with the hours Susie and I have had free of the kids we are yet to produce a Miles Franklin winning novel, Archibald prize winning painting, ARIA nominated album or even a Walkley award winning blog.
In fact, when we have found ourselves kid free we're usually too tired to do much else than talk about the kids. And, hardest of all to admit, we tend to have much more fun when the kids are around.
Which leads me to the question: is it possible to have a home/ life balance or is this a false goal? Are home and life necessarily one and the same?
Comment on Diary Dad's blog.
