OMG YES. All of this. Bravo!
I’ve had a lull in my job for a few months now, where new projects haven’t started up yet, and old ones are humming along and I’m struggling with boredom and sameness at work. It took a little while, but I realized I don’t always need WORK to provide that mental stimulation – maybe I can focus on the time outside of work to learn new things or add more fun activities. I have a great job that gives me a lot of flexibility (full remote work, chill team) and it can be just that. Work doesn’t have to be my “family”, or my primary source of interesting activity 🙂

@Ruth – I’m so glad you’ve stepped up the pace of travel! And yes, there will be a chime in time, whether for your sister’s health or her husband’s. It’s good to spend as much fun time as you can with her before that happens.

I usually take at least one (sometimes two) trips a year with my oldest sister. I’m 65 and she’s 77. We lost our middle sister in December. I missed out on our sister trips during the COVID shutdowns, and there will chime a time when she won’t be able to go with me, either because of her physical health, or her husband’s increasing dementia. He still functions fairly well for now, and is working and writing a book, but one day she’ll be tied down at home with him, so I’m trying to get as much fun time with her as possible before that happens.

LauraC, It’s a tough mindset to get rid of, as we’re all raised to make work be THE purpose in our lives. (BS sayings include, “Follow your passion!” and “Do work you love!”) Except, it’s just a job, and that’s TOTALLY OK. That’s actually all it should be. We have to step back and realize that WE, us as human beings, are ends in and of ourselves, and we are not meant to be means for other ends, such as work (especially not “the man”). I do believe work is important, and it is needed to make the world go round and we all need money to pay the bills plus some extra for vacations and other luxuries that help us live a good life. I also do believe we should ask for those raises and earn what we are worth. I go in, *I do good work*, and that’s it. No more, no less. I refuse to go “above and beyond”. My company and my coworkers are lovely, but they are not “family,” as so many like to insist.
By making work the center of our lives that everything else revolves around, we shortchange ourselves, and we shortchange our families, friends, and communities by prioritizing them less.
Kicking the workaholic mindset is hard to do. I began that journey many years ago. Psychologically, it didn’t happen overnight.
I highly recommend Jonahtan Malesic’s book “The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives” and Alex Soojung-Kim Pang’s “Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less” to help you along. 🙂

Sam – we should be besties or at least accountability partners! I am trying to kick the workaholic mindset but after 30 years of practicing it, it is the default and hard to give up, even though I want to!

@Gillian – sounds like she made a very rational risk analysis! Ultimately we all have to ask what we want our lives to look like.

@Cb – great to have grandparents closer! But yes, all activities have trade offs. People might want to travel AND care regularly for grandkids or travel AND be the leaders of an active civic organization but sometimes it’s hard to make the two work together in terms of timing. I know a lot of my church’s activities go dormant during the summer and that is when a lot of my fellow choir members travel.

@Emma – I am so sorry for your loss. I’m glad you got the time with her in 2021 and 2022 but yes, it is hard to think about the opportunity cost of 2020 given how things turned out.