Work Hard, Play Hard, and Chillax

Left: Owen’s proclamation on scrap paper— “cool craft table. but if you make a big mess you have to clean it all up. so you be careful.” Right: the craft table, after I made them clean it all up last night (Owen’s proclamation carefully placed front and center for all to see)

Thursday night my graduate seminar was devoted to discussing Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The students always dread the assignment when I give it: read the whole thing, cover-to-cover, every-single-word-please, in two weeks, and then be ready to discuss in depth, no-holds-barred. But they usually thank me later (sometimes much much later). It is hard work to read that book. But the pay-off is well worth it. This time around, there was a new spin to the discussion as we talked a lot about analogies that can be drawn between the “work hard, play hard” motto of certain spheres of life today and the cultural ethos that Weber articulates in The Protestant Ethic. It was an interesting discussion, and it got me thinking, again, about the “work hard, play hard” mentality.

However, on my drive home that night, after stopping to pick up a prescription for Meera (another ear infection), and a load of groceries (to prepare for a weekend at home with my hungry boys), and knowing I was going to get home long after my bambinos were in bed, I was thinking only of how to ensure that my family could properly unwind from the work hard week we had just experienced.

It was a killer week. Of the week-nights last week, I was not home in time for dinner once. Not once. I had work meetings-events-dinners-classes that ran late on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. It is not often that my work schedule is this insane, but lately it has been. And it takes a lot out of me (and Braydon; and the kids). It isn’t just the missed time at the dinner table… it is also the coordinating, and planning, and strategizing that is required to pull it off (the scheming on the part of Braydon and I, just to make a week like that possible, is unbelievably involved). It takes a lot of work – on the part of all five of us – to get through a killer week like that. By Friday, we were all done with working so hard, and were more than ready to play.

The motto “work hard, play hard” was big at Colby while Braydon and I were in college there. And it is big, now, at Lehigh (and lots of other places) too. I’ve posted before about it (click here, for three examples), and I’ll probably post again about it too. The thing I’m thinking about today, though, is the piece that is missing from the balance. Amidst all the hard work and hard play, I think that people like me (and families like ours) often neglect the critical importance of total down time. In arenas of ambitious people and in cultures of drive-for-success (and let’s be clear: I’m not just talking about financial success, I’m talking about cultures of drive-for-success very broadly defined), due respect is not paid to the art of chillaxing (as K & O are fond of calling it). Whether you’re a student (or professor) at a top-tier university, or a worker in an NGO or non-profit, or climbing the corporate ladder, or a missionary in the field… chillaxing is not (generally) encouraged. 

chillax: (verb) (intransitive, slang) Etymology: blend of chill out and relax. Pronunciation: chĭlăksʹ. Definition: to relax; to be laid back; to calm down.

What I’ve come to believe is that in the ‘work-life balance’ of “work hard, play hard,” to chillax is just as important as to play hard. In the balance has to hang not just the duo of work-and-play, but the perfect trifecta of the three: work-play-chillax. And so… after a killer week (work)… along with the First Friday (play), there must also be time purposefully devoted to sitting on the couch and watching a movie and cuddling with the kittens (chillax).

Left: Meera and Mommy had a rockin’ night on the town Friday for our First Friday (she insisted that we go back to the same place we went last time— the “chips and salsa and queso restaurant,” and given my own love of that perfect trifecta, there was no way I was going to insist on otherwise). Right: Owen, Hudson, and Quinn chillax. 

SATURDAY: After a long work hard week, there’s not much that we enjoy more in the fall than blowing off some steam at a Lehigh football game. This is play hard at its best!

(Lehigh played Georgetown, and beat them badly, winning the Patriot League Championship)

But then, when we came home from the game, all pink-cheeked and wind-burned from being outside all day, it was time for purposeful and devoted time to chillax. After a play hard day, our chillaxing evening was dinner (Middle Eastern Beef Stew from the crock pot!) and a movie (Joseph: King of Dreams!) and kitten love—

SUNDAY: And amidst a Sunday morning devoted to some pretty serious yard work (note— this is simply work hard for Braydon; this is also play hard for K & O)—

 

It is just as important to chillax with a hot-chocolate-picnic break—

 

If taken in moderation, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with hot-chocolate-and-marshmallows-and-store-bought-ginger-snap-cookies (even when they are non-organic and probably laden with all sorts of evil things). In fact, if enjoyed on blankets in the yard together with your family on a Sunday, hot-chocolate-and-marshmallows-and-store-bought-ginger-snap-cookies are pretty dang good. And despite all the mega-bombardment with research articles and expert opinion and media coverage (isn’t that ironic) telling us how terrible “screens” are for our children (and yes, of course, to some degree screens certainly must be terrible), I’m going to force myself to not feel any mother-guilt whatsoever about the fact that quite regularly, on a Saturday afternoon, I’ll forcefully tell my kids (Kyle and Owen especially) that it is time for a “Mandatory Movie.” It is not unusual for us to drag them in from the non-stop-sports-in-the-yard to make them take off their sneakers and “sit on the couch and watch something!!!” I’m not going to feel bad about that, because it is part of the work-play-chillax balance that I’m conscientiously trying to instill.

And so, after all this time (20 years for Braydon and I) of thinking about “work hard, play hard,” I’m now officially changing our own family’s take on this motto to: “work hard, play hard, and chillax.” And now, we move on to another work hard week.