My Work-Life Balance Sheet by Tom Stern
May 5, 2008
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- The meddlesome father who was recently banned from the set of “American Idol”--for trying to orchestrate every level of his son David Archuleta’s performance on the show—did his best to stay involved this past week, shouting out his recommendation, through cupped hands, that his son sing not first but second. (I learned this through researching on the Internet. I’m not a fan of the show or anything. I mean, my daughter watches it, so when it’s on, I’ll watch it and everything, but…oh, never mind, no sense digging the hole any deeper.)
- Anyway, it was difficult for Mr. Archuleta to stay out of trying to control the process by which his son may catapult to fame and fortune. I understand this compulsion, and I recognize it because it is exactly the same kind of impulse I have to control regarding my relationship to my work. Which may well point to the fact that Jeff, and other parents like him, have crossed into a tricky area, in which what was supposed to be their life has somehow become their work, and an obsession at that. Kind of a “Twilight Zone” of work/life issues. I can hear Rod Serling now: “Submitted for your approval tonight, one Jeff Archuleta. A man whose tiny world is about to be turned upside down by the inner workings of his own mind.”
- The act of raising children is a hard job in and of itself. If there is a “work” part to being a parent, it’s the constant learning curve of understanding how to do it as right as you can, and how to deal with the myriad ways in which you are tested on a daily basis. The work of parenting should not also include your child being an assignment. If you’re bucking for an A+ on that assignment, you will burn the candle at both ends just to craft and mold it into what you consider good enough. Not to mention, you might just end up expecting a big, fat return on your time investment, and heaven help you if your adolescent wunderkind doesn’t provide that payoff. I’d hate for my kid to become a job that I ended up hating. After all, it’s hard enough not to resent having to sock away the money I wanted for that flat screen on the college fund (kidding!).
- There are any number of pat psychological explanations for what causes such over the top behavior in everyone from stage parents to the dads who start fights over a bad play at middle school hockey games. Chief among these is the idea that a perceived failure in the adult’s life has led them to overcompensate by living out another chance at glory through their children. I have to admit, I always wanted a career in sports, and would have wanted my son to be the next Mickey Mantle. Thankfully, I have two daughters. Although if one of them should show signs of being say, a Michelle Mantle, I might be hard pressed to butt out of that particular career track.
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- I was all set to write something satirical about Jenna Bush’s wedding over the weekend, certain that the President of the United States--a guy with one of the most overcommitted schedules in the free world—would fail to attend the ceremony, allowing me to launch into a diatribe about work/life priorities and indulge in a little political lampooning to boot. Well, the guy shows up at his daughter’s wedding after all, and so I had nothing to complain about, even though if he had any humility he would have ditched the nuptials and spent some time trying to get gasoline back to a buck-eighty a gallon. See? Maybe his priorities are a little skewed after all.
- Anyway, while getting over the notion that even a busy president makes time for his family, I began to channel surf in search of writerly inspiration. Before long, I hit one of those ads for Ameriprise Financial, wherein Dennis Hopper—he of “Easy Rider”/terminally-stoned slacker from “Apocalypse Now” fame—is urging his own rapidly aging demographic to plan for their financial futures.
- Of course, everyone who works too much sets their sights on their retirement. Those golden years when the forty years of stressed-out imbalance to which you’ve succumbed is finally righted by a non-specified amount of time engaging in leisure activities (golf seems to figure heavily) or perhaps even doing virtually nothing. Unfortunately, however, we will never live long enough to have as many years at last relaxing as we did digging ourselves an early grave. Of course, it’s obvious that Hopper was chosen to ease the boomers into their golden years because he represents the wild man we all wish we were prior to settling into a life of chasing paper. “Yeah, that’s right,” his ads seems to say to us, “I lived on the edge just like Dennis, and if being boring is good enough for him now, then it’s damn sure good enough for me.” In reality, of course, most of us very quickly settled into a life far more ordinary than that of a movie star, and we certainly didn’t get to make our money while also waiting outside the bedroom for Jack Nicholson to be through.
- Still, the message seems to be that it’s never too late to calm down and realize what’s really important. Unfortunately, the messenger chosen to deliver this wisdom is a bit off-kilter. When it comes to sage and solemn financial wisdom, I’ll take a John Houseman or a Sam Waterston. At least you get the sense that they are not currently in need of good investment advice because for a while there most of what they made was going up their nose.
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- The call went out to Facebook users in Leeds, England, and 350 of them responded. Summoned by an impromptu posting on the social networking Web site, the 350 showed up at an award-winning outdoor garden park with water pistols, buckets and, presumably, plenty of uncaring spirit, and proceeded to trash the place. Videos of the destruction have been posted on both Facebook and YouTube.
- Well, I’m always looking for the silver lining in the storm cloud, and what I see here is the enormous potential of Facebook to select something to mess with, and instantly organize people around a common goal. Just think what this could do for work/life violations!
- The daughter of an overworked businessman is late for soccer practice because her oblivious businessman of a father has forgotten it’s his turn to drive her there. A quick visit to Facebook, an e-mail blast goes out to thousands, and within ten minutes a couple of hundred teenagers have stormed Dad’s office building, working up a smash mix on some turntables and skateboarding in the atrium until the old man gets his butt out of the corner office and goes to where he is needed.
- A beleaguered husband, fed up with his workaholic wife’s third speaking engagement in one week, hops onto Facebook and invites the entire population of Naples, Florida (the location of his wife’s leadership conference) to show up at the keynote event wearing nothing but pasties and lederhosen. Bonus Internet credibility if they also bend at the knees while singing “I Feel Pretty.”
- Or, a long-suffering wife gets someone in her Facebook entourage to pose as a potential business client for her spouse, except when he shows up to the function room at the local Holiday Inn, it’s for a women’s book group that begins with a ritual four-hour marathon of Oprah on Tivo.
- Nothing can turn unsatisfactory behavior around like public humiliation, and the Internet is already full of videos of idiots sliding down ramps into wading pools, or overweight people falling on their butts while attempting some overly-ambitious stunt with a Vespa. It’s time to start posting the everyday transgressions, like clueless behavior towards those you love, that are not only more annoying, but can, potentially, do more lasting damage. So be careful, work-obsessed drones: Facebook is well-positioned in the marketplace…to finally bring you down.
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- Okay, Mr. Downey, Jr., it’s clear that after the boffo box office on Iron Man that you have just landed yourself a sweet role in an ongoing franchise. Well, this is America, bud, and you can’t have too much of a good thing, I always say. Like every other unfulfilled sad sack in the business world, I have a screenplay languishing under the collection of dried-out stamp pads in the third drawer down on the right hand side of my office desk. And, if I may be so bold, Robert, this one has your name on it. It’s entitled “Irony Man.”
- It’s the story of a wealthy industrialist who designs his own high-tech weaponry; a position which, as you might guess, keeps him both impossibly busy and emotionally unavailable to those who love him most. Now, if you are sitting down, Bob, comes the irony so subtly implied by the film’s title: you see, every time our protagonist is put on the spot by his wife and children who feel the relationship slipping away because of his unhealthy obsession with financial success, he shoots back, “but why do you think I work so hard? I do it for all of you!”
- This is the engine of irony that drives the entire movie. And it would be a good change of pace for you. The big action sequences in this picture are about the actions of the human heart. (Not literally. No shots of a pumping heart or anything. It’s a metaphor. You’re an artist, Rob. You “get” what I’m talking about, right?) In the same vein, this is a film where the chase scenes are about a man trying to catch up to his own inner pain: the deep psychic wound that occurred in his childhood and has left him someone incapable of true feeling, siphoning all of his passion into his work. I leave it up to you, as you “prepare” for the role, to decide exactly what the nature of that psychic wounding was for our protagonist. However, if you would like any guidance from me I would say (just off the top of my head of course) that you might think about what it was like to be raised by a domineering, hugely successful CEO who did not have enough insight into his driven nature to see how it was impacting his family, while at the same time being indulged by an over-protective mother against whom he could do no wrong, leaving him a hopeless bipolar mess with no internal guidance system to help him operate in the world. Just a direction you might go, that’s all.
- Mr. Downey, Jr., I’m sure you can relate to how many men out there would, if pressed, have to admit to being an “Irony Man.” Taking on this role in my long-unproduced (and, yes, a bit overlong right now but I’m dong some judicious editing) screenplay would show the world that what’s important to you goes deeper than a titanium alloy suit and more distracting special effects than the Democratic primaries. When you’re ready, call my agent. Actually, if you could call someone who might be able to get me an agent, that would help, too. Well, gotta go. The extra time it has taken me to compose this letter has, ironically, further alienated me from my family.
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- Not surprisingly, the latest edition of Grand Theft Auto, the reprehensible yet popular (what, something in America is popular even thought it’s tasteless?) video game has arrived with its share of controversy. Well, such dust-ups will be nothing compared to the outcry that will accompany the upcoming release of the new interactive extravaganza from Stern Enterprises, “Grand Theft Quality Time IV.” In much the same way as GTA gives its users vicarious cheap thrills by allowing them to indulge in unpleasant car-related behavior in which they don’t usually indulge, GTQT lets people who are trying to be good little work/life balance practitioners run an obstacle course of ill-advised offerings. Here are just a few of the highlights of this exciting new game:
- The storyline follows Werk A. Holic, an unrepentant mover and shaker as he navigates through the seamy underbelly of a rain-soaked metropolis called TimeSuck.
- Players assuming the role of Werk must attempt to veer off into the city of TimeSuck’s many distractions, including the deadly presence of readily available wi-fi, and office buildings that have their own food courts, while taking calls from family members whom they assure they will be right home.
- Deep in the bowels of TimeSuck lies the village of iPhone. Here, the challenge is to avoid being decapitated by a variety of passing hazards (glass panel trucks, pedestrians who happen to be strolling by with rotary saws, etc.) while walking around you’re your head down because you are constantly interacting only with your iPhone. Bonus work/life destruction points awarded for making it to the other side of iPhone village with your head still attached.
- Celebrity cameos include the likenesses of Tony Robbins and Suze Orman, who, while inspiring you to even further achievement-related success, also happen to be naked. (The game company made me put that in.)
- Finally, Emotion Alley provides the most terrifying set piece in all of GTQT. It uses a built-in tool that allows the player to insert the heads of family members and loved ones, even the family dog, onto the bodies of oncoming “affection-seekers.” These affection- seekers stumble toward you like zombies, crying out for an evening in, a weekend away, your appearance at a school play or any number of things that put demands on your non-work time. To survive Emotion Alley you have to run as fast as you can past these pitiful pleas for human (or animal) contact, and then punctuate your ignoring of their needs by attending a different Power Point presentation on morale for every loved one you neglect. If you’re playing the game right, this particular portal should culminate in your being institutionalized.
- So, whaddaya say…you game?
April 4, 2008
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Dear Internet Friend:
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I need urgently your help right up at this minute. And there is promising to you many hundreds and thousands of dollars for the return to you if you can only contribution to my cause.
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I come from a country with many challenging troubles. The fuel that allows the vehicles we drive to run on the roads has gone so big in price that even the people who work at their jobs cannot begin to pay for it. There is right now such a big dividing in one of our major political parties that people wanting to hold a big important office are hateful toward each other, and so busy hurting one and the other that how to get us better jobs and have our health and hospital paid for does not matter; only what matters is sniper fire and pins made out of a flag. Things here getting so mighty terrible that our biggest nation leader goes on television to the quiz shows and talent shows and is silly. And then, the government gives big rich companies money so they will not die, but can only come up with six hundred dollars per person for the rest of us who struggle.
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As you can see, my life is living hell. My own family does not see me anymore for I work and work and cannot remember even the color of their hair or eyes. I biggest fear is that my place where I live is going downward in the tubes and that me and my friends allowed it to happen by giving to China all of our manufacturing. So you may be feared yourself and understand how I am desperation now and pleading with you. My good friend who has the job at Exxon/Mobil reports to me that profits hit all time high during this very bad time for everyone else! So now is time for you to send me all you can afford and let me invested it for you in this company so that I can stop myself killing myself work so hard for so little investing return. My friend makes big promise to me that you will see so much more in money back! If you give one hundred thousand dollars American, I will guarantee times three you are getting with this opportunity of the lifetime! And, think of this, friend, what you will be doing is rescuing me from the hopeless and the doom of this very frightening place where so much has gone screwy.
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I know you care about me here and how badly I am doing. I know you will help me. One hundred thousand American good, good, good for me and make you feel better, too, for stopping one man like me from going downward in the tubes. You will get it all back in week, two week, no more than that. Thank you, dear friend, for loving me so with generous generosity. I wait for your cash.
Yours faithfully, Tom Stern.
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- So Delta and Northwest merge, and Arby’s is buying Wendy’s. JPMorgan bails out Bear Stearns and a Brazilian sugar company has purchased ExxonMobil. It’s hard to say what the advantages to the consumer will be. In the first case, perhaps more leg room in the waiting area (which is where we spend most of our time during flying now anyway), in the second, maybe chili with roast beef gravy. But the main point here is that one group of people, having seen another group of people failing and troubled, swallows up that other group of people in the hopes that, together, they can operate more efficiently. Well, if this doesn’t point up a missed opportunity to the American family, I don’t know what does. It is time for Life to finally step up and merge aggressively with Work. A hostile takeover, if need be.
- Money is a language the work-obsessed understand. Raising enough for Life to overthrow Work will not happen overnight, but look at how much Obama generated off his Website. There is nothing that can match the determination of those who are fed up with the workaholic in their lives and are willing to plunk down a few bucks to make it stop. So, let’s say millions of concerned citizens eventually raise 100 million dollars for their hostile Life/Work takeover. Initially, it would have to be parsed out among those families determined to be the most deserving (a variety of criteria for these first test subjects will apply; everything from hours spent holding dinner to amount of times the overworked person in their life has had to rely on name tags to remember the names of their own family). Each family will be given 500 thousand dollars to essentially “buy back” their never-present loved one for a one-year period.
- No longer will excuses such as “but I only work this hard for you” be able to fly. It can hardly be a valid reason not to spend time with one’s family if, indeed, it is now the family themselves who are paying the salary. Overtime, dinner meetings and business trips will take on a whole new meaning, as each will now apply to the person’s new job—that of being around, enjoying and appreciating his or her loved ones.
- Basically, the person who works too much becomes the equivalent of the struggling company that is increasingly irrelevant and can no longer gain the proper foothold in their chosen field. The family, then, acts as the benevolent bailer-outer, ushering in a new era of success for both parties. Life operates more efficiently because it has taken the best qualities of the company it has acquired and used them to increase its own efficiency. And Work is happy because it is being paid to labor toward something more important and meaningful.
- I think it is time to start fundraising for this revolutionary idea. How much you got on ya?
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- The latest YouTube sensation is a long-suppressed video from 1999, showing edited highlights of a man going slowly bonkers while being trapped in an elevator for nearly two days. At one point, the poor guy, stuck in an office building on a weekend, attempts to literally climb the walls. I don’t claim that I would have behaved any differently if I was in his shoes at the time, but I believe his ordeal has provided a cautionary tale for the rest of us, and a reminder that in every supposedly negative turn of events there exists a lesson for the next time.
- So, if any of you overachieving, stressed-out businessmen and women ever find yourselves in the same predicament as this latest Internet star, don’t view it at as an invitation to chew your fingernails to the nubs or pound your fist against the imitation wood grain. No. This is just another aspect of the successful business person’s tendency to rail and fight against anything they cannot control. Looked at in another light, being stuck in an elevator could very well be nature’s way of imposing down time on you. Claustrophobic, psyche-busting down time to be sure, but down time nonetheless.
- Do some breathing exercises. Think about how you might structure that Great American Novel you’ve always had inside you. Try to sing the entire soundtrack to “West Side Story” from memory. Try to recite the play-by-play from the historic 1984 National League game five playoff between the Cubs and the Padres, also from memory. If you have your briefcase with you, write a love letter to your spouse. Write letters to your kids. By the time you’re through exploring the ways you have been forced to relax, you’ll forget to check and see if you can get cell phone reception in an elevator shaft. But, if you do, and you’re lucky enough to be stuck in the elevator on a Saturday and Sunday like the guy on YouTube was, it’s free weekend minutes! Maybe you can call a few long-lost friends; you know, the ones who somehow got the work/life balance you’ve always wanted and whom you have secretly always envied for their seemingly effortless happiness. Their soothing tones will remind you of what you can still achieve if you’d only take things a little more slowly.
- The possibilities for constructive use of your new-found quiet time are endless. Sure, the whole no-food-or-water thing could get old fast, but if you really are the type-A personality everyone says you are, this is but a trifle. Not that I wish the fate of being trapped in an elevator on anyone. I’m just saying, see it as an opportunity and not a setback. A way of discovering that circumstances have handed you something that will ultimately be healthier for you, despite the first rush of disappointment you feel at the news. Kind of like when Starbucks is out of pastries.
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- Even as the latest season of “American Idol” moves into its final weeks, I was on the fence about creating an “Idol”-themed blog for today. It seemed a little low-brow. Then I found an article on the show, by no less a reputable a source than the Los Angeles Times, which did a point-by-point analysis of the most recent contestants to be voted off the program. The piece was written with all the earnest gravitas of a graduate thesis on A Comparison of Modes of Duality in the Works of the 18th Century Romantic Poets; so if the LA Times can take this crap seriously, so can I.
- To that end, less of a term paper than, well, a pitch for a new televised talent show. The media is awash in ways for everyday citizens to have their fifteen minutes, but the field seems confined to endurance tests, singing ability, weight loss or a penchant for wife swapping. Not that one expects television to celebrate the deeper aspects of our humanity anytime soon, but it doesn’t mean they can’t at least put it on the back burner. Call it “Work/Life Idol.” In this show, contestants are judged for their ability to prioritize the things that really matter.
- A panel of celebrity judges (Stephen Covey, Dr. Wayne Dyer, and some third person culled from the pool of people who push self-awareness during PBS pledge drives) watch people in a variety of hypothetical situations try to choose the healthiest option in each case. One hopeful sits at an office desk taking an urgent call from their toddler who misses them, while that week’s guest star (Pauly Shore? Steven Seagal? Shannen Dougherty?) harangues them to get back to work. How long before the badgering makes them abandon their loved ones needs? The celebrity judges will weigh in on each entrant’s performance. And from what I’ve heard about that Covey guy, you don’t want him on your bad side. They say he makes Simon Cowell look like that nun who shows people around art museums.
- Elimination rounds include real-life decisions such as the “Bag-Of-Money-On-The-Left/Lasting Marriage-On-The-Right” Gambit, or the “Surgically Implanted Blue Tooth Challenge.” In the season finale, the semi-finalists go head-to-head with the Dalai Lama, who whispers arguments for obtaining eternal bliss into their ear while they try to close a multi-million dollar real estate deal with that week’s celebrity guest (Kevin Federline? Rob Schneider? A previous runner-up from “World’s Biggest Loser”?). Sorry, but we have to have a “real” celebrity guest in the season finale. Nobody is going to care about that Dalai Lama guy.
- Americans need time to adjust to new ideas. Maybe there is something horribly ironic about making a contest out of good work/life balance, but sometimes you have to break the system from within. And any other ideas for games or challenges on “Work/Life Idol” will be cheerfully accepted.
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- A Pew Research Center Poll reports that Americans believe cheating on your taxes is only nine percent more despicable than cheating on your spouse. Nine percent! How are we ever going to get the balance right in this country when matters of money keep nipping at the heels of matters of the heart like this? Basically, we’re saying the notion of destroying someone’s self-esteem, battering their very psyche with emotional turmoil, betraying a sacred trust; all these are only marginally more troublesome than someone who tries to write off a trip to Bermuda. (Actually, while Net surfing I found a story on an obscure tax loophole that allows you deduct expenses on business trips to such locales as Bermuda, Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago without having to show a specific reason why your meeting was even being held there. This is amazing news. The only snag will be trying to communicate to the guy who brings the doughnuts which one is Trinidad and which one is Tobago.)
- It just seems that money and sex are always running neck and neck in the American mindset, each one constantly vying for the top spot in the “I’ve got mine” sweepstakes. Why should someone getting away with ripping off the IRS (an organization that is the butt of more contemptuous late-night comedian jokes than Britney Spears, Dick Cheney and Carrot Top combined) offend our sensibilities more than an adulterer whose callous behavior figuratively rips out their spouse’s heart, steps on it, microwaves it, then steps on it again? Maybe we just tend to see someone who gets away with something we wish we could get away with as deserving of our scorn. Maybe we try our best to do the right thing and resent someone who steals from their fellow taxpayer. Or maybe money is always tapping on the door of our emotions, making itself more important than love and intimacy, thereby leading to a breakdown in communication, lack of respect and, in the worst case scenario, an affair. It’s an endless cycle of dysfunction from which we may never escape, but one that continues to ensure decent ratings for Jerry Springer.
- Hey, I’m just like anybody else. I’m going to try and write off my ferret as a dependent every chance I get. And if I can find a way to declare ESPN as a legitimate business expense (let’s see…if I don’t keep track of sports…my career will suffer…because…I won’t be able to make small talk with clients…my numbers will drop….and I’ll get canned…yeah, that sounds about right), you can bet I’ll do it. But does this put me on the same level as some superficial Hollywood star who ditches his wife for his nanny? I like to think not. But, everybody has different criteria for what is offensively dishonest. Like, for example, a politician claiming it’s all going to be different once they’re in office, or the Emmys adding a reality TV category…those are right up there with the biggies as far as I’m concerned.
