As a child, I don't recall giving very many gifts to my parents. One gift that I gave to my dad was a metal "sign" that said the following:
Never get too busy making a living that you forget to make a life.
To be honest, I'm not even sure where I found it. Probably the Flea Market, which I spent many weekends at growing up buying and selling things with my mom. And surely by that point I was starting to become less enamored of my dad, which I did because I didn't understand why he was the way he was1.
And, of course, when I found out my dad passed away a few years back, one of the only things I wanted of his things was that sign2.
This sign today sits in my office in a part I don't use very often. I found it recently and, perhaps for the first time, really started to think about what it meant.
I spend too much time "working." I'll be the first to admit it. Not just stuff for my job but things that might be classified as "busy work." It may be because the cacophony of "life" is often too much to take3. See my last post on the [intense world theory [phoneboy.info]]. "Work," by comparison, seems like an escape--something I have a lot more control over.
What I'm starting to realize, as I get older, is that there is going to be a time where I don't want to work anymore. Whether I can afford that remains to be seen but if I'm going to be able to do that, I need to figure out what that "life" is going to look like.
And heck, even for leisure time while I'm still working, I need to figure out something else.