I am still writing. I have moved from Blogspot and Medium to Substack like everyone else but it feels like I am sending my writing off into a black hole so I am posting here in case I can snag a reader or two.

I finished an essay about a month ago titled "What if We All Worked Less?" I started the essay on maternity leave, when I had a week to myself before my daughter was born. In that week, I read two books in one week (!) and wrote a draft of this essay, as I was trying to work through what was to come and exactly how I was going to manage being both a mom and working full time. i.e. How could I do it all?

I kept writing and tweaking the essay after I became a parent, as I was living my question, juggling parenting and working full time. It took writing the essay to find an answer to my conundrum that seems obvious and easy enough though in our society feels impossible to find: part time work! Wouldn't it be nice if I could go down to part time work and afford a mortgage payment with my partner? We will see. 

After publishing the essay, I came across a quote from David Cain posted on Substack that the 40+ hour, five day work week is too much for all us. He sums it up, or reiterates what I was trying to get at with my essay, and I guess I will leave with that here: 

"The eight hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people do in eight hours... but because it makes for a such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work."

Here's to hoping I can find the time for some of my ambition outside of my work - for reading and maybe even writing, even if that is just an essay a year.