Gift #30: More time with my family.
The end of the 40 hour work week. Ok Ok I know, many of you who know me are saying "But Rose, you don't even have a job. What are you talking about?" One of the reasons why I haven't been able to find a job since I started looking 8 months ago is because I am looking for something that is not 40 hours. I am a professional; I have an MBA degree and lots of experience building and developing businesses. I have not come across a good, well-paying professional job that is less than 40 hours, period. I don't want to be away from my daughter all day so that I come home tired and just want to rest. I want to give my daughter and my husband my best self, not my tired, worked-all day self.
There is a consensus among anthropologists and historians that our ancestral hunter-gatherer groups usually worked about 2 days a week for about 5-6 hours. That's a 12 hour work week! I wonder what they did with all their free time? Explored? Played? Protected themselves from predators? Sat around the campfire (with all their friends and family by their side) and talked about life, animals, God, children? In this respect that doesn't sound too bad. Also, did you know that in the Netherlands, the current average work week is around 27 hours? And France is about 30. From what I understand, they don't earn as much as Americans but they also don't need to because the government supports some of their daily costs of living--education (college included), health care, etc.
Why are we all working ourselves to death? Why do Americans work more hours than any other developed country on earth? Why do we receive less and then use less vacation time than anyone else on earth? Do we really have to work so hard, for so long, just to be able to buy more stuff and a big house to put all that stuff in? My biggest question is, do Americans even care? Am I the only person that wishes that I and my husband both worked about 25-30 hours a week and had the time to come home and play with our daughter and have dinner together and share life together?
My gift then is to figure out a way that this can happen for my family. I am going to focus on how to get jobs where we are not so focused on amassing lots of money that we lose precious time with people we love.
I really just want to spend as much time as possible with these two!
