Balance: Work and Family

Life goal: Land a beat covering an ACC college basketball team.

In 15-20 years: See above answer

Last time on a date: April 2010

 

And that has caused a few relationships to end because I say straight up that I work odd hours, I love my job and I still haven't decided if I want a family or not. As you might guess, that is not exactly conducive to making a relationship last, but I feel I have to be honest.

 

Make your family the priority and if you're going to choose one...choose family...other jobs can be had, even in these difficult times.

That said, my shop is great at keeping my job flexible, so I do more and more from home. We have two little kids, and I get tons of time with them...working during nap times and fitting phone calls in throughout the day. Lot of long nights in the basement, but I'm a late-nighter anyway

My wife's incredible, and we do a lot of car-key handoffs, but know a lot of other two-income families working with the similar situations. The time you do have with your wife treasure...do those extra special things often. And try to carve out at least one day a week where your spouse can count on seeing you -- all day. For us Sunday's is all family...something breaks at work, it holds until the next day or one of our other writers gets a quick text (rare).

 

flex sounds like he has it worked out.

This job will take every waking second you have if you let it.

 

Honestly, for as much of a beating as Nighthawk as taken, I've talked to a couple guys who had no real interest in pursuing the family angle at all. Now these were guys on BIG TIME beats at major metros, and I was a little shocked with how casual they were about the whole unmarried thing. It seems to bug a lot of people, but I'm sure there are some who are perfectly fine taking the other path.

 

I'm sure some are okay with that path...this is a good job for a single person, especially if you can find a beat where travel is mixed in. You get to see a lot of places, covering a college football beat, etc.

I've seen too many jump in, enjoy it for the first five years, then get the wake up call 'Hey, I really like this girl, but this job isn't going to work'...trust me, that a tough place to find yourself.

Even worse for those I've seen go through divorces over piddling jobs such as ours.

 

There's no one answer to this. Eventually, we'll all decide what's best for us and head down that road. A lot of us put in our time as a one-man staff, and if there had been a way to get everything done in 40 hours a week, I guess I wish I'd been smart enough to figure out how. Thankfully, I'm closer to the end of my career than the beginning, and I know I'm not going to sit back one day and regret that I didn't spend more time at the office.

 

I know this: when I was young and before I met my wife, I'm glad I did work my ass off so I could get the that perfect job that allowed career AND personal satisfaction.

I really think the only part of this issue even worthy of debate is whether being the "young guy happily working 60 hours for the price of 40" is really doing a disservice to his co-workers. On that one, I think it's just an inescapable reality that your career may suffer if your family/personal life first, whether that's because another guy at your paper is making you look bad or because a guy you've never even met is willing to do the job you applied for for a wage that can't feed your kids.

The people who make those career sacrifices for the benefit of the family do so willingly, believing that they are getting the better end of the deal.

The more I read this thread, the luckier I feel, btw. If you can get a big beat w/ limited travel at a mid size paper in a big market, grab it and hang on for dear life.

 

You know, I expected the response, and I'm used to it. I have a lot of female friends, and none of them can believe how nonchalant my attitude is toward marriage. It's just not something I really ever had as a high priority.

Probably the best example of how it wasn't a priority came a month ago when a girl asked me if having a truck nearly kill me while I was sitting in a doctor's office (yes, that happened) had made me more open to a relationship because I'd nearly died and would regret it if I'd never married. I told her no, all it had done was made me realize that if the story ended there, I wouldn't do a thing differently. Needless to say, that shocked her and any thoughts of dating ended there.

I guess I'm just different, but I still haven't decided if I want a family and have mostly leaned toward no. The thought of spending my life alone doesn't scare me a bit.

 

It shouldn't scare you, but don't be shocked to be pegged the "creepy guy" in the neighborhood in 15 years.

 

My wife the other day told me that in our first set of emails at age 23 or 24 (we went to college together as friends and then reconnected), I told her that I was starting to realize that life wasn't all about work and I wanted to settle down and have a family eventually.

I told her that, in all honesty, I was probably just trying to get in her pants at that point

 

That would be pretty judgmental, so I wouldn't want to associate with those neighbors anyway.