Antonia Bernardin

This is mostly a book blog but sometimes I talk about things that have been on my mind. I have recently been trying to address years of being in a cycle of burnout but it’s so hard around full time work.

I have concluded that we aren’t meant to have everything together.

Here’s the thing, I have this theory that around full time work you will not be able to ‘keep on top of everything’. Because the full time work week is predicated on the assumption that there is someone at home, doing unpaid labour, to keep on top of the domestic work. The 9-5 was designed a long time ago, when you didn’t need to have two salaries in the household to survive.

I still live with my parents, so I’m not without support but still, it’s nearly impossible to exercise, keep on top of cleaning, have hobbies, a partner and see friends, without exhausting myself. I don’t know how people who have children or relatives to care for manage to do anything outside of work and care tasks.

I recently listened to ‘Four thousand weeks – time management for mortals’ and while it was a lot of philosophical waffling, one of the main tenants from the book was that there will never be enough time, and accepting that frees you up from the relentless pursuit of trying to manage your time better, because there just isn’t enough time.

So yeah, that got me thinking, I give up. We are not supposed to have it altogether. It isn’t laziness, it isn’t poor time management, it’s just an impossible task. There are only so many hours in a day and only so much life.

I once watched a TED talk that said you have a certain number of balls to juggle in your life, some are glass and some are rubber. You have to decide what of the things you are juggling is glass and which ones can be dropped, or at least left to bounce for a second.

So, I guess the point of this blog was to say, I’m working really hard to find things to let bounce and learning to let them because I’m too young to be this damn tired.