Brother

So my little brother is coming into town for a whole week. This is exciting because all he does is work. In his boring retail job. See he thinks he's making a difference. I think he's just working for someone else to get rich. Now don't get me wrong, I know what it's like to feel like you're the only one working and that the company will fall apart without you. But guess what, every job I've ever had has kept going without me there. Yeah none of the places I've ever worked (except Mervyns actually but they had already claimed bankruptcy and announced closure by the time I quit) have shut down when I left. But he comes by this naturally. See my mom has the same thing. She practically refused to use paid time off. Yeah the end of every year she has to take so many days off otherwise she'll just be out the money! And even then she won't take a vacation. Her only vacations are when my dad goes to baseball tournaments. My dad is a little different because he's had a lot of jobs over the years and has even owned a couple of his own companies… But with that it still creates a mentality that if you aren't working then you're failing or worse, dying. So living with all that pressure creates some confusion about work/life balance. I have always struggled with work/life balance. A lot of that is because when I am home I am just watching tv which does not help my life and therefore causes anxiety because I am not accomplishing anything. Today I came to work totally hungover and I didn't even notice because it didn't change how I worked. I came in and did what I know I need to do, I managed a situation that came up the night before and everything. Yeah I when I have something (anything) to focus on I just focus and get it done. But how do I keep that focus when I have more comparative freedom? For example, I'm done with my actual work today… I still have 4 hours to work but I don't have anything that I was working on so what do I do? I know I'm so busy, I'm generally overwhelmed here but when I actually have time to do stuff I don't remember what to do. God this is so ranty… I'm sure it doesn't even make sense. Ok see focus, this post is about work/life balance and how my family does it so bad! Which makes me recognize how bad I am at it as well. I honestly don't know how to change. I try to tell myself that I need hobbies to distract from TV but it's been almost 33 years… That probably won't happen… So I will continue to make myself anxious about it…