Family Time

I like to be home with my family, but I travel a lot with my current job.

The general trend is for me to leave early on Monday morning to fly to some place and return late on Friday night. I work with clients Tuesday through Friday. This means that I’m away from my family for long periods of time. I also means that I’m home every weekend. From time to time I might get remote work with a client where I stay home instead of travelling or there just isn’t any client work at all. Those weeks I stay at home and catch up.

The work schedule is volatile, and completely dependent on client needs and demands. To demonstrate, in 2018 I travelled every week between mid-January through mid-June except two. Travel was sparse July through August and picked up again in September.

I chose this life. When I accepted this job and left my office job as a college Registrar my wife and I accepted that I would be gone a lot.

I tell you this merely as background. It’s Friday and I get to return home tonight. It’s the Friday before Thanksgiving and there almost never travel work on Thanksgiving week. I’m excited to be home. What’s even more exciting is that as we enter December, I have the next three weeks at home. Being home in early December means that I will get to attend my kids’ Christmas concerts, and I’ll get to take them to see a couple of Christmas productions that are playing in our area.

When I’m gone I don’t have a lot of communication with my family. My wife and I chat online every day, multiple times per day. Once or twice in the week we’ll have a video call. I message my kids every morning and usually at night. They don’t respond all the time, but that’s okay. When I call, if they’re home, they get on the call. It’s nice that we have technology that allow us to chat whenever we have time and to have video calls.

All that said, my favorite weeks are when I’m home. I’m a morning person, so I can get work done early, before anyone else is up. This frees me up for when they get up. I don’t eat breakfast but I enjoy sitting with them while they eat, asking them questions and sometimes getting a little more than a tired grump. Sometimes I’ll make a hot breakfast for them (if they want, and I’m inclined).

My kids are pretty resourceful and on the above average side of responsibility. So, we don’t have to remind them too much to pack their lunch and get ready and all that. They both wake up early too, so we always have time to sit around and chat as I distract them from their phones and Switch.

When I’m home I love to walk my daughter to school. She’s not as convinced as I am of the benefits of walking five blocks to school, so I started doing it to show her how easy it was. It turned out that it was a great time for us to chat. Every day that I’m home I walk her to school. My son rides his bike to school, but he comes with me every evening when I walk our dog and check on the laundromat. It’s a great time for him to process his day and tell me about it. He’s like that and I enjoy listening to him.

After the kids are gone to school, my wife and I get to have some alone time with a cup of tea or coffee. It’s nice to sit around and just be with her. We usually get back together for lunch too. Every evening we all eat supper together at the table. Our evenings are always different depending on the day.

I recently heard Gary Vaynerchuck say, when talking about work-life balance, that whatever he’s doing he’s all in. So when it’s a work day he’s going solid from when he wakes until he goes to bed. When he’s home he’s all in, with his home and family. I think that’s the way I am, or at least what I’m trying to be. Being truly present where you are and with the people you’re with is a good philosophy in my book.

When I worked my so called 8 to 5 job, it was never like that. I had a 50 minute commute and usually needed to be at work long before 8, so I’d be up and out the door before anyone else in my house was awake. I was gone all day. I almost never left at 5, but usually 5:30 or 6 or sometimes later. With the 50 minute commute home it would easily be 6 to 7 before I returned. We would eat supper together, but then there was not much time before the kids went to bed and by that time I either had other work to do, or I was so tired that I’d go to bed. I usually had homework on the weekend as well. Two weeks of vacation which were generally jam packed with visiting some branch of the family scattered around two countries was not enough to catch up.

So, in the end, even though I travel, during the week we’re not really losing much. They don’t get to see my smiling face every day for a few minutes, although they could via video calling if that was important. What they do get are longer stretches of time when I’m around and can be fully there for them.

It’s not perfect a perfect arrangement. I don’t believe that there are any perfect options. As I reflect on the last year and a half that I’ve had this job I’m sad for some of the things that I missed, but overall, I get my family and they get me much more than they did when I was home and had any of the jobs I’ve had since my kids were born.

That’s a good thing.

What do you think? Leave me a note in the comments and let me know.