Who owns our time?
Reflections and the highs and lows of a career break
I woke up at 7:37am. Not because an alarm jolted me from my sleep, but because 7:37am just happened to be the right time to wake up today. I have never, not once, in my life described myself as a morning person. It turns out, though, that when you own 100 percent of your day, it’s pretty easy to be a morning person. I also found that I was an afternoon and evening person as well. This day, and all the other days that passed during my career break, were entirely mine.
Most people don’t own 100 percent of their time. I think most people probably own 30 percent. This 30 percent is squeezed into morning coffee runs before work and rushed “I-love-you’s” with car keys in hand. My friend spends her 30 percent on evening Peloton classes and pottery lessons. Yours is probably filled with runs to the grocery store and scrolling on your phone with the TV on (don’t worry mine is too). If you’re lucky, it’s filled friends and family you love. Your time together neatly boxed into meticulously scheduled coffee dates or a few hours for cocktails on the weekend that you both agreed to weeks ago. Because your friends and family, like most people, only own 30 percent of their time too and your hours of ownership only overlap with their hours every few weeks.
The other 70 percent of our time is owned by Someone Else. For many this is probably their company, but it’s most certainly someone or something your obligated to. It could be your children or an elderly parent. It might even be yourself, if your self-employed. If you’re a working mom, it’s probably many things.
For me it was my company. My strained 30 percent dwindled to an anemic 15 percent when the pandemic started, which was mostly spent maintaining the basics of my life or at the gym, which I decided long ago was my firm non-negotiable. On the weekends, I spent time with my boyfriend (now fiancé!) taking walks through the park. I would inevitably talk about work and my company would claim that much more of my time.
It’s rare that we get to own all of our time. The last time I experienced this was Winter Break in college and few summers as a kid, before I was old enough to work. It’s hard to think of happier memories than these. Some days I would play video games with my brothers or walk the city aimlessly with friends. There was plenty of time to daydream and imagine a big life, although we didn’t realize at the time that life rarely gets better than this.
The tides shifted for me when I was laid off from work and I found myself with complete ownership of my time for eight happy months. Similar to when I was a kid, I had my needs covered and the world was my oyster. While I was working, I had a long list of things that I would do when I finally got the time. These were my big ideas that I kept alive on pure hope, but now I finally had time to pursue. For me this included work on my real estate investment (it’s a long story) and my YouTube channel. (Since you read this far, I’ll gift you with this link to my YouTube. Don’t make me regret it.) I also went on extended trips to visit my friends and family in other cities, read a ton, hiked and took my dog to the dog park every day.
I pursued these relentlessly every day. And every day I went to bed feeling fulfilled and happy. After eight months of pursuing my interests, I found my next job in a handful of days, which I now consider to be a stroke of incredible luck. This was a contract job at a great company. This time it was Big Media, not Big Tech. The contract had an end date and a handshake agreement that it would become full time. I wasn’t ready to sell too much of my time back to a company yet, so this worked perfectly.
Ten months later I found myself unemployed for a second time after my contract for work was up and the handshake agreement fell through, again for reasons outside of my control. This time my perspective on owning 100 percent of my time tilted. Like how clowns are supposed to be fun, but get twisted into things of nightmares. The financial runway that I had previously was now more of a driveway and the driveway was mostly dirt and potholes. Owning my time felt like a curse because I could no longer afford it.
This time around, I spent most of my unemployment anxiously churning through job posts and digging through my network. I did not wake up blissfully at 7:37am those mornings. Instead, my alarm screeched at 7:00am every morning jolting me back to reality. Eventually I found a job and now I can look back at this time with some perspective. I learned an important lesson. We should all strive for a career break, if circumstances allow it, but these are best kept as just that, breaks.
I’m back now, to owning 30 percent of my time. The other 70 percent is on loan to a company, this time with no end date. At first, it was hard to give up ownership of my time. But muscle memory took over and my days snapped back to an old routine. Now, though, I hold a firm wall between my work life and my personal life. Like a person leaning against a door that is always being pushed back open. I protect my 30 percent and somedays the force to keep this door closed is harder than others. These days I’m happy to exchange my time for an income and health insurance. I know it’s not forever. Someday, I’ll own 100 percent of my time again. I hope I’m ready when that day comes.
Thanks for reading, it means so much to me! It’s the start of a new year and my hope for myself this year is to make the best of the time that I own and worry less about the time I do not. We have to give up some of lives, it’s how we make money and care for others. I’ll forever be balancing these two sides, but in 2025 I’ll do my best to be grateful for what they both bring! I hope this for you as well.
xx AELO
we all have this arbitrary goal of not working. but it's like fool's gold. it's not no work that we're after, it's to contribute to society in a meaningful way.
I always remind myself that work is not the problem, not doing something you enjoy is the problem.
great article - really reminded me of what's important
You are a good writer and your experiences are very relevant. I look forward to reading more of your posts!