Will you live to work or work to live?

/ 30 October 2009

I think that on average I’ll work to live. Not that I plan to find a job that I really enjoy, but I just think that the leisure of life is the priority over work on this situation. Most of my time is spent in leisure, that’s true for us all, and so other reasons aside, that is why it is the priority. Work will be a major portion of my life, mainly because of the fact that it’s what will literally fund my life. I fully intend to find a job that fits me so perfectly that I’ll enjoy and even want to work more than required, but still, life is there and what I plan to spend my time on. Life (/living as in the question) will always be my baseline and primary “mode” of what I do. In some ways the work within what is considered the job market isn’t as truly life as what I do prefer to call “home life” (versus “work life”). We all prioritize our couple of decades on Earth this way, just none of us really fully agree on what to call the two overarching categories. I would prefer more time for life than work, but when the need for more funding to live arises then I, given the opportunity, won’t hesitate to work more in order to keep my lifestyle afloat. This too is a common mindset, at least for those in the middle class. But do I draw the line anywhere? The answer would have to be yes, in percentages I don’t want to work more than 70% of my time. That’s also pushing it, as my life is going to take up more life 50-55? of my time. But I can’t be positive about any of that. Do I expect to take the chance of combining the two later on in life as some sort of consultant? That really is entirely dependent on how far I go in my career path. Ideally if I become a software developer I will certainly split off at some point, but even still I won’t really know until the time comes. All I know is that it is one possibility for my life that would truly be a goal, it just can’t happen for two or three decades. I’ll end this multi-thought answer simply be saying that the question’s intent is specific even if the question’s wording is not. With that, my answer is, as said above, that I’ll simply work to live.

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