Balance: How work-life balance is crucial to your career’s success

Like many of us, I am in a WhatsApp group with my campus classmates — and let me pass my public sympathies to my old boy buddy Erastus Ethekon (and Esther Kirimi) who lost their mothers these last few weeks. And my congratulations to Deputy State counsel Pauline Mcharo and her team for beating Cortec Mining on behalf of Kenya.

So not too long ago on this group, we were discussing life/work balance, following the suicide of the PWC fellow who, apparently after work-related meltdown, simply walked out of the 17th floor office window. We all know people who were like this poor gentleman.

That guy in high school who, while you joined five clubs to maximise on going out for ‘funkies’, was the bookworm you always found curled up over a textbook in the library (like a real worm). In fact s/he spent so much time in the library, you thought they should put a plaque with their name over the spot where they studied.

When you went to campus, while you chased after lasses (like luscious Julianna) and caroused with Annabella, the only groups they joined were study groups.

After university, of course, folk like the PWC guy joined blue chip firms, and in his case, he slaved away on forensic accounts for many long hours, across the last ten years, his only breaks being when he had two burnouts, and the year he took out to mourn his mother. On the day the gentleman took his leap into oblivion, he had left the office at 1.30am, but was back at his desk at 6.30am. That is only four hours of sleep!

On weekdays, I sleep just five hours, between 10pm and three in the morning. But I think I have a pretty healthy work/life balance, and perhaps that is the reason we have never ever suffered the dreaded Writer’s Block in the last 15 years of being a full time writer. Yes, this particular column is in its 15th year today. Although it wasn’t always in this wonderful magazine! So how does a guy in a WhatsApp group with lawyers end up writing for a women’s magazine, right? And is this a wise choice of my intellectual capabilities?

Growing up, I observed how my late Mom, a lifelong banker, always seemed so tired and said her job, for all the salary, was ‘daylong’ stress. So 15 years ago, with my dad recently demised (and so not around to disappoint), I made the decision to try and make my bread from my talent (writing) rather than my trained skill (Law). The question I am most often asked is if, honestly, I have ever regretted this decision.

When I get up at 3am, it is not to prayer or witchcraft but to writing (whichever book I am working on), which come to think of it, is a bit like prayer or witchcraft, as you conjure worlds.

At 6am, I spend an hour going through my ABC channels – Al Jazeera, BBC and CNN (to see if they have found the body of Khassogi, etc.). Then it is another hour of breakfast with the newspaper, before the 8am to noon on newspaper work, then a two-hour lunch as I watch a documentary on TV.

In the afternoon, I do errands, or spend a couple of hours reading at the library, before picking up Chelsea from school at 4pm, then spending an hour with her doing homework.

Six to eight in the evenings are ‘cocktail hour’ — Blanket & Wines media cocktail, Subira film premiere cocktail, an evening at the theatre, Mojo Tuesdays for rock, that sort of thing.

Then home by 9pm for supper (and KTN Prime Time news) before going to bed by 10pm.

The bank account may not be exactly bulging with cash, and I don’t drive a fuel guzzler (even the Toyota I bought 4 years ago is parked, waiting for the day I get a DL) but we have contributed to the creative economy through several books in the last ten years.

My creative work has also enabled us to see the world, a dozen European cities since the turn of the decade. Then there is your reader response, like Aoko, who wrote me last week complaining of her auntie’s husband under whose roof she lives, but who hits on her all the time. Is it worth it? You bet, every given Saturday!