Stage 21 – Work & family - can they be balanced or does one have to give?

Hi Readers,

Sorry for the late post. This week has been very hectic for me. We had a very successful event at work and I’m still trying to recover from it.

I’ve really struggled to decide on a topic for this post but I have decided on one that’s currently on my mind; which isn’t directly related to dating but has some relation.

Things happen to us that sometimes make us feel like shutting the door on the world (this is not a suicidal comment, so please don’t read too much into it), but as a lot of you may know life goes on whether we like it or not. Since graduating from University I’ve gone through a few things that have made me feel quite low and I’ve come to learn that adversity is part of life and it teaches us about ourselves.

Whenever I find myself struggling with something and just before winter I often ask myself: what is my motivation? When I was younger I always thought I’d grow up to be a woman who is career driven, but I also thought I’d have a family. Lately I’ve been asking myself: what are my priorities and how are they ordered? As much as I like my job and I’m grateful for it, work is not my number one priority. At the moment I spend most of my time at work than anywhere else (this calculation does not include the time I spend sleeping). I know this is the norm for anyone who has a full time job and very successful professional men and women spend far more time than I at work or doing work. Whilst the men tend to have children, the women don’t and if they do they either had them when they were quite young or they hardly spend time with their children.

I don’t want to say I’m feeling broody, especially as I’m single, but I think about what I want for my children when I have them a lot these days. I think about the amount of time that I want to invest in them, so they’ll grow up to have certain values and the confidence that they can do whatever they put their mind to, regardless of what others have to say. In order to achieve this goal I consider being a mum as a top priority after my relationship with God, as that’s also something I’d like to invest a lot of time in. After reading Proverbs 31 and thinking about the qualities that I possess, I think I could be a great help mate for the guy I settle down with, so in order to have the type of family and marriage that I’d like, my husband also has to be a top priority. Ideally my aim is to have the following prioritised as shown below.

1.       God

2.       My husband

3.       My children

4.       My mum, sister, brother

5.       Work/Business

6.       Friends

7.       Education

8.       Extended family

9.       Community contribution

10.   Everything else

As shown above work is not a top priority at all. That is not to say I won’t give it my all whilst I’m there, it’s just that I care more about the things that I’ve placed before it. From what I know about big organisations and some medium and small companies they seem to expect a lot from their staff and they want employees to have passion for what they do. The more passion and time you put into a company, the more likely they are to reward you by promoting or giving you more benefits. As much as it’s great to be rewarded for ones hard work, how can I have the conducive relationship that I want with my husband, children and God if I’m too busy with work or spending most of my time there?

I know a lot of women manage to balance work and motherhood, which is good and encouraging but I’m just saying that I have given this topic a lot of thought lately and I’m really considering my options. Time will tell what I’ll decide to do when I meet the one and have children. I may surprise myself and discover that I have a lot of energy and I’m able to balance everything well. If that happens I can truly add myself to the list of extremely blessed people in this world.

Apologies if this is not the type of post you were hoping to read. I just wanted to share a different side to me.

Thanks for reading My dating year – stage 21