It took me a long time to figure this out.

...and having to play the "officer" role in the military certainly didn't accelerate my learning curve any. I finally figured it out, I think, mostly living in VA.

But the sectioning and partitioning off of various aspects of your life, relegating certain behaviors and certain attitudes to specific locales and circumstances accomplishes nothing except lead that slow, long march into frustration and multiple personality disorder.

Unless you WANT multiple personality disorder. In that case, go for it. [Think of all the new experiences you could have...]

Twentysomething: Why I don’t want work/life balance » Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk:

"This whole notion of needing to separate work and life implies that your career, which takes up about 75% of your day, is something you simply try to get through so you can go home and do what you really enjoy for the other 25%. What a terrible way to live.

I wholeheartedly believe that my life has a purpose. My purpose is to be successful, genuinely happy and to make a difference in this world somewhere along the way. Not a single one of these values can take a backseat to another. The balance doesn’t work, we already know this. I don’t want to choose. I want a blended life.

...There is no need for me to keep work life and home life separate. The majority of week nights you can find me in front of the computer chatting with a friend, watching TV and messing around with MySpace or Facebook. I may as well send out an email or finish up a work briefing at the same time. When I told my friend about this post, he said, “Work/life balance? That doesn’t even make sense.”

Think about it, he is absolutely right. I would never dream of saying I want a Family/Life balance or I want a Friend/Life balance. Is work so terrible that people don’t want to consider it a part of their lives? I sure hope not, because if that’s the case than the next fifty years of my life are going to suck!

The lines between work and life have been blurred for years. I have decided to embrace this fact and work on the best blend for my life... In the meantime my peers and I will keep searching for this blended life, while everyone else continues to run in circles failing to achieve their so-called balance. "