N/A

~ MaryG

How do you balance work and home life?

This prompt is N/A (not applicable) to a retired person.

Sometimes I have to wrack my brain to remember what day of the week it is, when I wake up in the morning. As other retirees know well, you want to take advantage of weekdays to do stuff like grocery shopping, when other people are busy at work. I had to learn this lesson the hard way over the past year. I messed-up several times. I specifically remember fighting for a parking spot at Costco in tax-free Nashua on a busy Saturday last year when the lightbulb went on: Why on earth would anyone go to Costco on a weekend unless they had to?

Back when I was working and raising children, work-life balance wasn’t a huge problem for me. I mostly worked as a part-time consultant/contractor, except at the very end of my career when I went full-time. I liked my job a lot and was happy to leave suburbia and go to the city a couple times a week. I especially liked going out to lunch with my work friends, most of whom had no children. It was great to talk about non-mom things with other adults. They couldn’t have cared less about the outcome of travel soccer try-outs or which kids were recommended for Honors Math.

One of the biggest issues for me back then was traffic. Getting back to the suburbs from my Boston office could take over 2 hours on a bad day. It was hell. I got involved in several road rage incidents. I was sometimes late to pick-up my son at his afterschool program.

In conclusion, if the powers that be want to help people have work-life balance they should fix traffic. And retirees should stay the heck out of the way and do their errands at 11am on Wednesday.

The 10 US Cities With the Worst Traffic:
1. New York
2. Chicago
3. Los Angeles
4. BOSTON
5. Philadelphia
6. Miami
7. Houston
8. Atlanta
9. Washington
10. Seattle

16 thoughts on “N/A”

  1. I have one blogging friend who lives in Sweden, and she has found the perfect solution for dealing with traffic—she doesn’t have a car. She walks to work, she has a bike, and she uses public transportation. She has deliberately chosen a place to live where she can do this and she has no regrets. I live in a rural community with no public transportation, which means I need a car, and I expect this is true for many, many people in the U.S. But how I admire her. What’s the ultimate solution to traffic? Fewer drivers and fewer cars.

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    1. That sounds ideal! But what does she do in the winter? Especially in Sweden. I’ve read that driverless cars—if they work as a “fleet”—can help ease traffic. But Boston is fiercely fighting allowing them.

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      1. I was completely encapsulated in my “mom” role when my kids were small, swallowed up by it but it’s important to remember we are humans, women, badasses and mistake-makers too.

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  3. I think traffic is the bane of everyone’s existence. Maine isn’t overly populated but the small town and village roads that are now tourist meccas can’t keep up with the increase. S inner is a nightmare anywhere on the coast.

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    1. Sales tax-free New Hampshire baby! Massachusetts residents fondly refer to the border city as “Trashua” 😉
      Definitely worth the trip up there to save the sales tax on big ticket items.

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