Making work 'work'

 

From speaking to other mothers, I know I am not alone in thinking that work can be an awful waste of time. Take today, for example: the sun was flaming in a cloudless sky — not that you could feel it in the chilly confines of our air-conditioned office — and all I could think about was:

 

a) I could have put a second wash out;

b) I should be at the beach with my kids;

c) Why didn’t I do teaching?

 

Now, Option C is a perennial whine of mine, as reliable as fine weather for the Leaving Cert; but I’m a bit long in the tooth to be heading to Mary I. to do a H. dip.. So, barring the demise of a mystery millionaire relative or a sizeable Prize Bond win, I’m just going to have to make peace with a summer of work. In fact, at my age, I should have reconciled myself to a full four seasons of being in the office, but 13 years of working from home gave me a taste for freedom I just can’t shake.

 

 

 

A certain resentment of being in the office all day is surely unavoidable: you spend less time with your loved ones than you do with people you would cling to the wing of the plane to avoid talking to on a flight. You spend so much time sitting at a desk that the health risk has been compared to that of smoking (the science says so!). If you dwelled too much on what you actually do at that desk all day, you would corrode your keyboard with briny tears. So, you open your Facebook page for distraction, and some silhouette on a beach beside a stack of flat stones tells you to stop wasting your life and go out and do what you love.

 

Which would be wonderful — for the five minutes it would take for somebody to ask for phone credit, the washing machine to break down, and the mortgage provider to squeeze the last few cents from your bank account. So, it’s important to consider the great things about work: you get actual money for doing it, it tends to encourage a daily shower habit, and you generally don’t have to pick up dirty socks or referee arguments between teenagers. Well, not that often, anyway.

 

Aoife O'Carroll is a separated mum living in Co Kerry with her two boys aged 17 and 14, and a girl aged 10.