danah boyd explores the question does work/life balance exist? in a recent Apophenia blog post. (I’ve entitled this article “*/* balance” because “*” [pronounced “star”] in programming terms means “fill-in-whatever-you-want,” so “star/star” balance might stand for work:life balance, or work:fun balance or work:family or whatever your particular thing is. Her blog post was triggered by this New York Times article In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop. You might also call the article, as they suggest, Death by Blogging.

I have always contended that my method in life was to avoid “work” in favor of something that I enjoy doing. And for me, enjoying means not only that I’m happy, but that I make some sizeable contribution to the welfare of humanity at the same time. So when I label something work, I am referring to something that I really don’t want to do, but have to do for some reason.

And people have always said to me “you’re always working.” But, I actually don’t do very much that I’d classify as work by my definition. I’m fanatically dedicated to what I do, but it’s more often not really work.

So let me say more about balance… [Read more…]