Balance: Work and Family

Except for the fact that your list is a meaningless list of acknowledgments and says nothing about actually achieving that balance. Everyone can talk a good game and anyone can thank their wife in the acknowledgments section of their book. But you haven't established anything to show that those people balanced work/life when writing the book.

You are more shallow than the people who you decry. You talk a nice game about work/life balance, but then you admit that someone could pay you enough to give it up. If you are Scott Boras -- a man who has failed to cure cancer, win a war or teach a child to read -- then it is OK to throw yourself in your work. But if you are someone who writes about Scott Boras, you are a moron if you devote yourself to your work. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, you're a whore who is haggling over the price.

 

Pardon me while I stand and applaud.

 

You are being a silly idealist.

Sorry, but I'd be willing to sacrifice more family time if I was pulling in seven figures than if I were pulling in a cool $10/hour at the Prep Gazette.

A big part of the reason? The time spent at work, in that case, can net a lot of value for your family. A vacation with the wife. The option to attend any college the children want to attend. Just plain financial stability.

 

Dick -- your list is naive at best. Obviously, being married and having children as a line item in an acknowledgement section says nothing about the quality of those relationships. Beyond that, it might be illuminating to take the wives and the kids listed and see how many of the wives go with how many of the kids. Those acknowledgements are like Oscars speeches, there will be raised eyebrows and hell to play if you don't thank the significant other.

I'm sure there is a similar glowing acknowledgement in Rick Reilly's first book, and he even used the back page of SI as a love letter to the missus, and we all know how that turned out.

 

I was the one who said that people should make whatever choice they want in the work/life balance as long as they are honest with themselves and those around them. That's not idealism, that's cold-eyed realism.

So when you are working 80-100 hour weeks making those seven figures, will your children have a father or a humanoid ATM that occasionally sleeps in the same bed as their mother? What happens to work/life balance then? Either a work/life balance is actually important enough to you to make the tough choices to turn down the chance at 7 figures or we are simply back to haggling over how important spending time with your family really is to you.

 

Obviously this is all on a continuum. The choice isn't binary between 100-hour weeks and $10/hour. I wouldn't want to be Scott Boras. So that was a bad example. I was just tossing high-profile, high-salary, non-athlete jobs off the top of my head.

 

I've been wondering about this the last couple of months. Mrs. Rhody and I are due at the end of July and I know that once she returns to work - she's the bread-winner, which I am fine with - I'm going to have to make changes in my work schedule.
I work at a chain of weeklies and we put out six papers - one on Wednesday, three on thursday and two on saturday - and cover nine schools.
I could spread my time and work five days a week, but instead I work non-stop Monday to Wednesday (our deadlines are Tuesday a.m., Wednesday a.m. and Thursday a.m.) with the occasional weekend mixed in so maximize my time off.
Once the baby comes, that is going to change. Mrs. Rhody works every Tuesday (she's a pharmacist, so that's a 12-hour day), so I'm not going to be able to work. Instead, I'll find a balance because I realize that my family is more important than my job. It's something I haven't realized until these last couple of months.
Of course, then there's weeks like this one. I plan on working 55 hours this week, but only getting paid for 40; next Tuesday I'm playing golf in a media day event (I'm getting paid for the press conference, not the golf) and then I'm headed to Montreal for a bachelor party. I figure working extra hours this week and putting them on next week's timecard works, even though it's highly illegal. I'd rather do that than blow vacation days for when the baby comes.

 

Ernest Hemingway thanked at least three wives for his books before he ate his own shotgun.

 

Since you think I'm the village idiot, can you explain what you disagree with? You used to post some pretty thoughtful stuff in these parts. Now you'd just rather tweak the people you don't like. I mean, whatever. Whatever floats your boat. Whether I made it artfully or not - and I know that you never think I make any point artfully; the point has been made, absorbed, and beaten to death by now, across multiple screen names on multiple message boards - my initial point was that somebody said it is too difficult to even date and socialize and meet a wife, let alone have a successful marriage in the business. I think, at least in small part, that list refutes that. It doesn't mean all the marriages were successful. Obviously, it is conspicious that it says Kriegel only lives with his daughter, with no mention of a wife.

I know it's difficult to make marriage work in the business. I've posted before that it's not a terrible idea to consider news because of the weekends off and more family-friendly hours.

 

Certainly, I can explain that with which I disagree.

Being a writer is an inherently selfish and arrogant act. Being a journalist, maybe less so, depending, I guess. Either way, it's full of trade offs and compromises and mutual understandings -- as are all relationships. To act as though you've cracked the code with a blanket -- well, if you're covering preps, clock out at 40 and go play with your kid -- stirkes me as condescending and arrogant beyond comprehension. To then give as your offer of proof for this argument a list of authors who thanked their (current) families in acknowledgements is just comically bad logic, which one would think would undercut the condescencion a bit when it was gently pointed out to you, but, alas, no. And, as a side note, you're really, really insulting to people who cover "preps" whether you realize you are or not.

Pope's a silly idealist? Really? That's just absurd. All he said was people have to choose what's important to them. And, yes, they do. They do have to choose. And they all do, one way or the other. Thanking someone in a book isn't dispositive of any damn thing. People procreate. Let's try to delve a little deeper, shall we?

Protip: What works for you might not work for everyone, and whatever works for someone trying to make it in this business is cool with me, and ought to be cool with you. Perhaps consider that the folks who are one-man shops covering preps seven days a week are actual people, to start with, who have motivations for doing the things they do. And whether you can conceive of it or not, they miss things in the lives of their families just like your list of famous authors and just like the guys who work in the press room and just like US Senators and just like the guy who picks up your garbage does. We all make choices.

With what do I disagree? Awful logic and a fundamental lack of empathy.

Oh, and Norman Mailer has been married six times, and stabbed his second wife.

 

To sum up my view in a nutshell:

 

This is a good thread with a number of good points. I do hope it doesn't join the ranks of good threads that were derailed by petty pissing matches and got locked.

Address the posts, please, not the poster.