Comfortable Chaos. Carolyn Harvey & Beth Herrild
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as the group shared their choices and their challenges. When we raised the question of “balance,” one woman said “don’t insult me by insinuating that true balance is even possible.” The room practically exploded with agreement — there was visible anger and frustration about this notion of balance that felt unreachable and tenuous.
From that evening, the concept of Comfortable Chaos was born and the book and seminars gained new life and momentum. We broadened our research to include all of the possible work/life balance choices and reflected on our own wide range of experiences. Between the two of us, we have worked just about all of the options of full time, part time, job sharing, telecommuting, and flextime. We also interviewed numerous people living these choices and discovered their strategies and tips. From our own experiences and the generously shared stories of others, we have found many common threads that tie us together. We also marveled at the infinite ways people have crafted unique solutions to fit their personalities and lifestyles.
This book will bring you both the common threads and the creative approaches to various work arrangements and lifestyle choices so you can use what works for you. Speaking of using what works for you, this book is designed with your crazy life in mind. We know that you rarely get a chance to sit down and read a book cover to cover and although we hope you do get to enjoy everything in Comfortable Chaos, the book is designed so you can read the sections that most apply to you or jump to the topic where you need the most help. We also have lots of exercises so you can get right to the solutions. Whether you read while a child is crawling all over you, sneak a few moments of peace in the bathroom, or glance at a couple of pages during soccer practice, we hope your copy is well used and survives spilled milk and raspberry jam.
In Part I, you will learn more about your personal preference when it comes to chaos and discover many tools and strategies for dealing with the frenzied pace of life. You will also find help in assessing your current work/life choice and determining whether it needs changing or adjusting. In Part II, we look at some strategies and options for working full time and maintaining balance, while Part III covers staying home full time and the various options of part-time work. Part IV gives you à la carte help by providing solutions for everything from finding child care and returning to the workforce after a break, to assessing your finances and writing a proposal for an alternative work schedule. Part V reminds you that Comfortable Chaos is a journey, not a destination, and prepares you for the reality of constantly reinventing yourself.
We wish you well on making your chaos more comfortable!
1
Comfortable Chaos: It’s So Much More Than “Just Saying No”
The Pursuit of “Balance”
“Let me tell you what’s going on in my world today,” Marisa tries to explain to her friend. “I just found out my daughter doesn’t have a place to live at college so I need to fly back east to find her a studio apartment. My 88-year-old mother is refusing to get on the plane in Louisiana because she thinks she is in Seattle and is waiting for me to pick her up. My son has soccer practice at 4:00 p.m., which is the same time I am supposed to pick up my husband at the airport and then get to my daughter’s school.” Marisa’s friend pauses a moment and then says, “You have so much going on in your life — you just need to learn how to say no.”
Wouldn’t it be great if life were that simple? Anyone with multiple responsibilities understands that there is no magical solution that will make life calm and easy. Whether you are working and juggling family life, staying home full time, or doing something in between, it often feels like one constant race to get to the next commitment, only to barely regroup and do it again.
What happened to the pace of life? When did it get so bad that we sacrifice sleep, time to ourselves, and therapeutic sessions with friends? In the workplace, the major shift seemed to start around 1997 with the proliferation of e-mail and voicemail. Who knew that these very helpful tools would also dramatically increase the pace of work? Instead of receiving a memo and carefully crafting a reply that would be received days later, we are now susceptible to an unspoken expectation for an instant response. Add to this the effects of corporate downsizing that reduced the number of employees but not the workload, and it’s no wonder people feel so overwhelmed.
The problem becomes even more challenging when you factor in any type of family responsibilities. In fact, 64 percent of Americans report that time pressures on working families are getting worse, not better. Not only is the stress higher at work, the responsibilities of home life continue to become more complex. A primary example is today’s child-centric parenting style. Typical parents are very involved in raising, educating, and co-ordinating their child’s activities — whether they are babies, school-aged, college-aged, or beyond. The drivers for this phenomenon are numerous but the bottom line is that parents face high expectations (their own and others) when it comes to raising their children. As a result, parents often feel torn between their many priorities and end up feeling guilty.
Dan, a senior aerospace engineer with two young children at home, summed it up by saying, “My biggest frustration is that when I’m at work, I’m always pushing myself to get the job done quickly so I can get home. And then when I try to spend quality time with my family at home, I’m often rushing through the routines with the kids so I can get some private time. It feels like I am always pushing the limit.”
In addition to the challenges of parenting, many of us face elder care responsibilities. Even if you are not currently caring for your parents, there is a very good chance that you will be in the future. According to the Children of Aging Parents Organization (caps), in 1995 there were 33 million Americans older than 65, and this number is projected to be almost 70 million by the year 2020. This translates into an estimated 22 million care-giving households nationwide. So if you thought that your days of juggling work and family would be over once your children are grown — think again. Whether you look after your parents in your home or manage their care across town or across the country, you will continue to need to find creative ways to keep the chaos comfortable.
Another factor contributing to the feeling of being overwhelmed is the vast number of choices we face in all walks of life. In today’s workplace there is rarely a clear career path to follow. Instead, we need to individually design and implement a career plan. This could mean making lateral moves, changing industries, and nurturing relationships with a variety of mentors and peer organizations.
The choices involved in running a home and family are no less simple. More so than in our parents’ generation, today, we make much more conscious decisions about where to live and the corresponding lifestyle choices such as what car to drive, commuting options, and services for our families. Heck, we don’t even send our kids out to play in the yard without deciding if we will go outside to keep an eye on them or be hypervigilant by peering out the windows.
And then there’s the issue of school. No longer do we simply send our children to the neighborhood school. Instead, we research schools and test scores before deciding on a school that best meets our children’s individual needs. This is of course a good thing — but it’s also a new thing. Our parents simply sent us off to school without any research because that was the norm of the time and they weren’t exposed to the infinite options and possibilities available today, especially via the Internet. Today, choosing the right school is a common conversation topic among parents — just one example of how our culture and the vast availability of information make life so challenging. As you may know, once you have decided on a school, the decisions never stop. Simply emptying your child’s backpack at the end of the day will produce a flood of flyers on activities, field trips, and school events that await your decisions!
We can certainly celebrate the fact that we have so many choices and that information is readily available. But it’s also important to realize that these choices are a contributing factor to our chaos and that many of us are operating without clear role models of how to best create a life that combines work and family. It’s not that previous generations didn’t work hard, because they most certainly did. But they didn’t have the wildly divergent priorities and possibilities that we are faced with today and that can overshadow our ability