I’m still trying to figure out exactly when it happened. That moment when my carefully constructed work-life balance tipped over into just… work. It wasn’t a dramatic collapse—more like watching sand slowly slide through an hourglass until suddenly you realize the top chamber is empty and you’ve been staring at it for ages without noticing.
Last Tuesday I found myself sitting in my car at 11:43 PM in the empty parking lot of my apartment complex, still on a work call. My laptop was balanced on my knees, the blue light illuminating my exhausted face in the darkness as I nodded along to someone explaining why we needed to revise the entire presentation before tomorrow morning’s client meeting. I’d been on that call for over two hours. I’d started it at my desk, continued it while making dinner (well, microwaving a sad frozen meal), and was now finishing it in my car because I’d needed to move my vehicle before midnight to avoid the street cleaning ticket I’d already gotten twice this month.
It hit me then: I wasn’t balancing work and life. I was just working in different locations.
When did this become normal? I remember a time—not even that long ago, maybe three years?—when I’d have laughed at the idea of taking work calls after 7 PM. I used to have hobbies, for god’s sake. Real ones, not just “catching up on industry podcasts while doing laundry” which is apparently what passes for leisure in my life now.
I used to make pottery. Had a whole little setup in the spare room of my old place. I’d spend Sunday afternoons with clay-covered hands, making lumpy, imperfect mugs that my mum would proudly display in her kitchen even though they all leaned slightly to the left. Can’t remember the last time I touched clay. The wheel’s probably gathering dust in my storage unit alongside the camping gear I bought four summers ago for trips I kept canceling because deadlines kept shifting.
It wasn’t always like this. When I started my career, I was almost militant about boundaries. I’d read all those articles about burnout and workplace culture, and I swore I wouldn’t become one of “those people” who answered emails at midnight or canceled dinner plans for last-minute client emergencies.
I’d watch my boss Mark stay online until ridiculous hours, sending emails timestamped 2:34 AM, and think: that poor sod needs to get a life. I pitied him, with his permanent eye bags and his sad desk lunches eaten during meetings. “That will never be me,” I’d smugly think, closing my laptop at 5:30 PM on the dot.
Funny how these things creep up on you.
First, it was the occasional urgent email I’d check during dinner. No big deal, just a quick reply, fork in one hand, phone in the other. Then it was bringing my laptop home “just in case” something came up over the weekend. Then it was setting up my home office “properly” because, well, if I was going to work from home occasionally, might as well be comfortable, right?
Before I knew it, the boundaries had blurred so completely I couldn’t see them anymore. My kitchen table became a secondary desk. My phone became a permanent appendage, notifications buzzing through dinner, through films, through conversations with actual humans standing in front of me. I started keeping a notepad by my bed because “my best ideas come right before sleep” (or more accurately, because work anxiety wouldn’t let my brain shut down).
The promotion didn’t help. When they made me team lead last year, I was chuffed—validation, finally! A proper title, a bit more money, respect. What they didn’t mention in the congratulatory meeting was that I was effectively signing away whatever remained of my personal time. Suddenly, I wasn’t just responsible for my work, but for everyone else’s too. And since Charlie and Priya both had young kids and “real reasons” to log off at sensible hours, guess who picked up the slack when deadlines loomed?
Me. Always me.
“It’s just a busy period,” became my mantra. I said it to friends when canceling plans. I said it to my partner when missing yet another dinner. I said it to myself at 1 AM as I answered “just one more email” before sleep. The busy period never ended.
My body started sending warning signals. Tension headaches that lasted for days. A persistent eye twitch that made me look slightly deranged in client meetings. The time I actually fell asleep standing up in the shower (I still have the bruise from where I whacked my elbow on the tile).
But the real wake-up call—and Christ, isn’t it pathetic that this is what it took—came from my dentist, of all people.
“You’ve cracked another tooth,” Dr. Patel said, peering into my mouth with that little mirror thing. “That’s the second one this year. Are you grinding your teeth at night?”
I mumbled something incoherent around his fingers.
“You need to reduce your stress levels,” he said, with the casual confidence of someone stating the blindingly obvious. “Your jaw is so tight I’m surprised you can eat anything tougher than yogurt.”
I nearly laughed in his face. Reduce stress? Sure! I’d get right on that, right after I finished the quarterly reports, onboarded the new hire, fixed the disaster our marketing team had created with the website, and somehow squeezed in five hours of sleep.
But driving home from that appointment, with a referral for a night guard clutched in my hand (another appointment I’d have to somehow fit into my calendar), I found myself crying. Not dramatic sobbing or anything—just silent tears tracking down my face as I sat at a red light. I couldn’t even tell you exactly why. It was like my body was grieving something my brain hadn’t fully acknowledged yet.
That night, I did something I hadn’t done in ages. I dug out my old journal—the nice one with the leather cover my sister gave me for Christmas two years ago, still mostly empty—and I made a list of everything I’d missed recently because of work.
My nephew’s birthday party. A weekend trip to the coast with friends. Six—SIX!—dinner dates with my partner, who was showing the patience of a saint but whose texts were getting increasingly terse. My mum’s retirement dinner (that one still makes me wince with shame). The book club I’d joined and attended exactly once. The half-marathon I’d signed up for and never trained for.
The list went on for three pages.
I’d always prided myself on being dedicated, on going the extra mile. Somewhere along the line, I’d confused dedication with self-destruction. I’d started wearing exhaustion like a badge of honor, as if the circles under my eyes were medals proving my commitment.
Even worse, I’d started judging colleagues who didn’t do the same. When Dave from accounting mentioned he was leaving at 4 PM for his daughter’s school play, I’d smiled and said “of course, family first!” while mentally recategorizing him as “not serious about his career.” What a load of toxic rubbish.
It’s not like I’d even been explicitly asked to work these hours. There was no boss standing over my shoulder demanding I sacrifice my personal life on the altar of increased productivity. I’d done it to myself, brick by brick, building a prison of perpetual availability.
“Setting boundaries is an act of self-respect,” my therapist had told me back when I still had time for therapy. (I canceled those appointments six months ago because they conflicted with our team status meetings. Another stellar decision.)
The thing about boundaries is that once they’re gone, rebuilding them is so much harder than establishing them in the first place. It’s like trying to put up a fence after letting everyone use your garden as a shortcut for years. People get used to walking through. They get annoyed when suddenly there’s an obstacle.
Still, the car park epiphany shook me enough to try. The next day, I did something radical: I blocked out my lunch hour in my calendar as “unavailable.” Revolutionary stuff, I know. I actually left the building, walked to the park across the street, and sat on a bench eating my sandwich. I felt like I was skiving off, kept checking my phone nervously as if expecting an urgent “WHERE ARE YOU?” message.
None came. The world didn’t end. The client didn’t spontaneously combust. My team somehow managed without my constant hovering presence for a whole sixty minutes.
Small steps, I told myself. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and my work-life boundaries wouldn’t be either.
I’d love to tell you I had some dramatic transformation—that I marched into my boss’s office the next day and demanded radical changes, or that I quit dramatically to become a pottery teacher in the countryside. Life rarely works that neatly.
What I did do was set an alarm on my phone for 6 PM every day labeled “GO HOME.” When it goes off, I start wrapping up, no matter what. Sometimes I still need an extra half hour. Sometimes it’s an hour. But I no longer find myself still at my desk at 9 PM wondering where the day went.
I turned off email notifications on my phone. I redownloaded that meditation app I paid for and never used. I called my partner and scheduled a proper date night with my phone turned off. I apologized to my mum and promised to be present for the family dinner this Sunday.
Baby steps.
The work is still there. The deadlines still loom. I still care about doing my job well. But I’m slowly remembering that I am not just my productivity, not just a collection of tasks completed and emails answered. There’s a whole person underneath the professional facade—a person who likes bad reality TV and spicy food and sleeping past 6 AM on weekends.
That person deserves time too.
Yesterday, I found myself back in my car after work. But this time, my laptop was closed in my bag, and I was sitting there not because of a call, but because a song I love came on the radio and I wanted to hear it through before going inside. Five minutes of nothing but music. It felt like the most luxurious thing in the world.
Small victories. One day at a time.
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