31. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch with them.
I wonder how many times I've said this in my life. It's not just your friends, its your family and your kids and your spouse or significant other. It is so easy to get caught up in the importance of your job. Don't get me wrong! Your job is important. Without it how do you pay your bills? You don't. A job is very important, not only in aiding the payment of debts, but also to your mental state. There is a huge sense of accomplishment and importance involved in having the ability to support yourself.
The key is to find the balance between doing well and being a dedicated employee but also finding the time to be a good husband, father, uncle, brother and friend. You see how I did that? Yes, it also pertains to women. We need to be a good mother, wife, aunt, grandma and friend. I'm not perfect. I don't even aspire to be perfect.
I was in a 17 year relationship where I was second to the job, sometimes even third or fourth. He felt that he was providing for us so that was his part of the deal. Newsflash!!! I love that he wanted to support his family, there are lots of men that don't. But.... (and that's a BIG but) we always wanted him, not the money. I'm not stupid, we needed the bills paid, but we didn't need the lavish vacations and adventures, we needed him.
He wasn't available to us. So, we accepted the adventures and wished he was with us. The sad thing is that when we could convince him to come with us, he was no fun. He was grumpy and took a half dozen phone calls and you could tell he would just rather be somewhere else. We stopped asking him to come along so we wouldn't disrupt him.
The sad thing is when you have to sit your kids down and tell them that you are divorcing their Dad and the oldest (of the two that are still at home) isn't surprised. He was absent, even when he was home, he was absent. We did everything that we knew how to do to make him happy, but he just wasn't.
This applies to any relationship. If you are unable to maintain relationships because of your job, you have a problem. If you come home from work and wish you had someone to talk to, think about who you used to talk to. Where are they now? Why aren't they available to talk with anymore? It may hurt to realize that you kind of deserted that relationship for your job.
We need human contact. We need a friend. We need someone to just sit and listen to us when we need to ramble. We need someone to laugh at us when we say something really stupid. Take a look around you right now and who is it that you can talk to, or maybe even just sit with and be?
If you have people that have drifted away, figure out how to fix it. Obviously, I'm not talking about abusive friends or people that the relationship wasn't healthy. I'm talking about the people that loved you for you and stood there waiting for you to turn around and take their hand again. Those are the people that matter. There's a good chance they are hoping that you'll come back someday. Do it today!
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