IMG is nothing?

Kurt Vonnegut died last night. [Bow your head for a moment of silence].

He wrote what we needed to read:

1. our truths masked as someone else’s;
2. our folly put into focus;
3. our world as it was, without forsaking what it could be.

I still re-read Mother Night. Breakfast of Champions helped me survive a deep depression my 3rd year of college.

If we made Slaughterhouse Five mandatory reading in high school, we’d be able to revive the publishing industry and develop some really smart kids.

The NYT obit

A nice piece over on Salon by Andrew Leonard. Leonard played chess with him as a boy. I now have to be jealous of Andrew Leonard.

Read this post from Brazen Careerist a few days ago, wanted to comment then, but just couldn’t put my ideas into words. Since then, I’ve been scanning the comments and there is some good stuff there. Before I start, let me tell you about the post by Ryan Healy. Ryan wants people to realize that the whole work/life balance idea is flawed. He thinks that what we want professionally, personally, socially, etc. has to fit together and that no aspect can really take precedence over any other. He uses the contrast between the advice given to his girlfriend by her boss and that given by her mother to illustrate how confusing this can be.

At the office full of twentysomethings where my girlfriend, Niki, works, everyone was comparing their salaries, and the owner of the company got really angry. And his being angry made for a tough week, so Niki asked him if she could take Friday off.

He said, “If you’re going to be successful you need to start putting your career before your life.”

Of course she took the day off.

When she told her mother about the situation, her mother said, “If you don’t put your life before work you will never be happy.”

Hearing this conflicting advice from two of the most influential elders in your life is confusing. What does Niki’s boss say to his kids when he gets home? Does he tell them to put work before life? What would Niki’s mom say to young people she works with? Would she tell them to go home early?

From this point onward, Ryan talks about how he doesn’t even try for a work/life balance. I’m not going to quote his full article, nor continue the summary. You can read it yourself. But his post got me thinking.

I’m an entrepreneur who also works (almost) full-time for another outfit. This means that no matter what hour of the day, or day of the week I have work I can be doing. Lucky for me, I like what I do across the board, but there are still days when I’d rather be watching Naruto episodes or napping. Like Ryan, I’m young (26 vs. his 22) with no wife and kids. But even without those pulls on me, I find there has to be a division between work and life.

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