SSSS

I was chatting to Sarah on Skype yesterday and she typed, “My personal question today is: Did you think of your son when you wrote the blog today?” and I replied “LOL! Work life balance? Our Kyle!” - as Kyle seems to be living his life at work at the moment.

Kyle and Sarah got engaged last year.We fondly refer to Sarah as Triple S her nickname stands for Super Sexy Sarah and my future daughter-in-law and I get on so-o well. Sarah is a star! She is in her final year of psychology and we sometimes wonder if she initially chose Kyle as a case study! You see Kyle has a passion for computers and at times almost to the exclusion of everything else. He currently works in the IT industry as a framework architect. This is a new position in Dublin and his challenge is that he does not seem to know, when to leave the office and turn himself off. Ever since birth he has been able to function on just five or six hours of sleep. When he is focused on something he often carries on till he literally keels over. In fact, I have known him to be so reluctant to sleep that as he puts his head on the pillow, he gives an instruction to his sub-conscious mind to find a solution to his problem! (And it invariably works too!Wow!) So Sarah’s comment on the well-being blog entry was very apt. We are all keen to help keep his life balanced and yet he seems oblivious to our appeals.

Do you know someone who loves their job…and seems to spend too much time there? It can be as much a problem for the loved ones, partners and friends as it is for the overzealous worker. In the case of our son, his focus, drive, energy and determination are all admirable, however at times we fear for his health, sanity and personal relationships.

Our solution is we never give up loving and supporting Kyle and at the same time organising things around him so that he has to stop…

In his defence, he does know what he is doing. He maintains that is work style is only while he is developing his career. And to be fair, he does take time off and can play just as hard as he works – for example, when he asked Sarah to marry him, he arranged a long weekend for them in a romantic location. He flew her in from Frankfurt and he arrived from Spain to stay in the most beautiful hotel in Venice. And he proposed to her on her birthday, with champagne, chocolate and flowers in the Jacuzzi!

I guess we can forgive him just about anything now can’t we girls?

We can all live a life off balance for a period of time and suffer no serious repercussions in health and well being, however it is vital that we do a check up from the neck up and ask ourselves…. ‘Why am I doing this?’

You may have noticed the the blog title was SSSS…Kyle now lovingly refers to his Sarah - SSSS – wonder what her amended nickname means? Any suggestions?