Shameful shirking

Earlier this week, I read a great column in the Wall Street Journal, "What They Don't Tell You At Graduation." While the piece takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to graduates - my favorite pieces of advice being "marry someone smarter than you" and "I am not asking you to cure cancer. I am just asking you not to spread it" - there's one tidbit I just can't get out of my head. It's #8:

Don't model your life after a circus animal. Performing animals do tricks because their trainers throw them peanuts or small fish for doing so. You should aspire to do better. You will be a friend, a parent, a coach, an employee—and so on. But only in your job will you be explicitly evaluated and rewarded for your performance. Don't let your life decisions be distorted by the fact that your boss is the only one tossing you peanuts. If you leave a work task undone in order to meet a friend for dinner, then you are "shirking" your work. But it's also true that if you cancel dinner to finish your work, then you are shirking your friendship. That's just not how we usually think of it.

Ohhh...boy, oh boy. I so do this. I honestly can't count the number of times in the last several months I've done this, there are too many. Sure, I've got excuses - at one point, I've literally been doing four people's jobs - but just because you have excuses doesn't mean what you're doing is excusable.

I've skipped important lunches that would catch me up with friends. I've totally forgotten birthdays. I've completely neglected emails, and walk dates, and girls' nights, and promised meals for new moms. I've been speeding into the parking lot minutes away from daycare closing time at 6:00 even though I'm supposed to be there around 3:30 to spend a few hours with my little dude before bedtime. I haven't cooked dinner since...March?

Quite frankly, and pardon my French, I suck. There's just no other way to say it.

This isn't even my boss's fault. He's actually a crazy nice guy with a young family who would be the first one to tell me to get my priorities in line. But here's the problem, because the author is right: nobody other than my boss throws me peanuts. (Even though Jackson throws just about everything he can get his hands on, we've not yet gone the peanut route.) So I work like hell at the office to the detriment of everything else. Good thing I don't get a performance appraisal as a mother or a friend because sometimes I worry I'd get a big, fat "does not meet expectations."

All that said, the article came at a really unique point in my life, as I transition to a new role at NRF and away from a department I've been a part of for almost 10 years. (More on that another day.) I'm anxious to get started, sad to leave my diehard team ... and thrilled to be putting something new together. But as I move into that position on Monday, I've had this weirdly refreshing perspective that I'm free. I get to start over with this work-life balance thing. A whole new team. New expectations. The rest is up to me. Instead of working more on work, I need to be working more on life.

So when I leave a mound of emails to spend time with my kid, take the dog for a walk, put together a meal that doesn't require something frozen going into the microwave, and spend an evening with my husband that doesn't involve me sitting on the other side of the room with a computer on my lap, I just have one request: somebody, please, pass the peanuts. Or just smack me upside the head with them.