Omnifarious: May 2006 Archives

I found this post on the The Four-Day Week Challenge via Lifehacker.  Ok, so who am I to care, I only work about 3 days a week and one of those days is usually only a half day...but I like this sort of work philosophy.  Seriously, even workaholics can learn something from this. 

So this is why I love working part-time:

• I can go to school and not feel stressed
• I can enjoy the time I spend with my husband (even though he's the one working 10-12 hour days)
• I can blog
• I can read, play games, do my many hobbies and everything else I like to do
  
• I can sit outside with a cup of coffee in the morning and relax while I watch everybody on their way to work
• I can enjoy the quality of my life

Even after all that I still love my job and I'm even motivated to do work at home.   And from the post, this is the real reason why I love working part time:

Why it matters

So why is it important to work less? What’s the big deal?

The reason is that when you work less, it gives you more time to experience life and think; you can use the extra time to not only spend with people you love, take up hobbies, or invest in causes you believe in, but also to have ideas. Some of our best ideas have come while driving, gardening, reading, or painting on the weekend.

It's true.  That's not to say that I'll never have a 40 hour/week job again in my life, I probably will and I'll probably like it.  But what I know now that I didn't know a year or two ago is what exactly makes me feel happy and fulfilled.  I wish more people had this insight, I think the world would be a better place.

Even only working 3-4 days a week I'm still busy though.  I always can find something to occupy my time, and after class last night I know that this summer it will be school.  I need to clean out all of the library books I have hanging around my apartment because I know that I won't have time to read anything else (unless I can listen to it in my car).  I have 3 chapters from our textbook to read plus 9 articles by next week.  Then I have a paper due in 2 weeks...welcome to graduate school I guess.  :) 

technorati tags: work, work_week, life, school

During my vacation I watched a lot of Comedy Central so I was completely aware of Stephen Colbert's speech at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.  I don't have cable at home and my mom has satellite at the lake, I usually catch clips of the Daily Show online when I can, it was mentioned on there and I did catch the Colbert Report after it.  Yesterday I watched the speech in its entirety.  I have to admit that I liked it but I didn't find it completely funny.  I mostly don't always find Stephen Colbert funny but I also understand that he has a particular style of humor that only partially appeals to me.  I can respect that though.  What I can also respect is that Stephen Colbert recoined the word "truthiness" in a way that I find absolutely amazing.  The audience at the press dinner was not roaring with laughter either, but on the other hand, was Colbert really speaking to the audience in the room?  The way that his speech has filtered through the blogosphere has deemed it monumental, which makes you wonder if his intent was for the larger public audience.  Even if that wasn't the intent, the way that it has been perceived online is another testament to the power of people on the internet.

If you doubt how monumental the speech actually was, check out the wikipedia entry on Truthiness.  Since I'm not a regular viewer of the Colbert Report I did not realize that he recoined the word on the first episode on his show.  I was also not aware that the American Dialect Society announced that "truthiness" was the Word of the Year earlier this year.  Truthiness is also described and defined in the regards to the James Frey issue.  It is an interesting concept and discussion, also very relevant to the political waters these days.

technorati tags: truthiness, the_colbert_report, stephen_colbert, the_daily_show, comedy_central, wikipedia, james_frey, american_dialect_society