Work life balance

Running a board game store and trying to fit all my other interests in without overwhelming myself is an interesting balancing act, and one that I'm constantly attempting to fix.

Among the many hobbies I have include the martial arts (swordplay specifically right now), reading, role-playing, hiking (and other outdoor sports) and of course board gaming.  In between all that of course I have to fit the young lady of my life in (or is it the other way around... hmmm...). And of course, the generic 'see your friends / family' that I have had to do way too much of lately.

Devoting about 3 nights a week to swordplay is slightly above the bare minimum I need to progress.  And I'm loath to give up my only form of exercise.  It also helps destress me a great deal and deal with some aggression issues.  As the wife points out, I'm much less irritatible when I've been fed and been beating on other people (or, often, vice versa).  So that leaves me with about 2 weekday evenings and 2 weekend days for other things.

Add a day for gaming (technically for our Shadowrun campaign, but about half the time ending up with board gaming);  and that leaves pretty much 2 weekdays evenings and 1 weekend days.  And if I take any more time out that doesn't involve the young lady... well, I'll have a lot more free time. 

Unfortunately, that means all my other interests and hobbies drop by the wayside.  And every time I try to enjoy one of my other hobbies, like getting a good series of books to read; works suffers because I just don't have that much time.

Worst, it also means that I don't actually play that many board games any more.  I generally have to plan a gaming day a couple of weeks ahead, and my other more 'serious' gaming group all have busy lives too.  So when I'm free, quite often they aren't.  And vice versa.  In fact, the only times I do is because I'm purposely repurporsing 'work' time to test out new games.  Or occasionally my gaming group lets me test new games on them.

 It also doesn't help that what I consider an 'average' work week is 60 hours.

 On less whiny notes - the next small publisher contest is up.  As is our on-going review contest .