Time Out

I wonder why I don’t have more time. I read an article this week by a lawyer who stated that lawyers should not work more than 40 hours a week because after that it’s simply a case of diminishing returns. Hmmm, well if that’s my true entire life has become a case of diminishing returns.

I am of course not alone in this dilemma; I would imagine that most young professionals share a similar story. We have sacrificed much in order to fulfil a destiny that many of us may not actually want. We have become content to confirm to the standards set for us by society, but have therefore perhaps lost contentment in general. According to wisegeek.com, the average age that a man marries (26.8) has increased by one year in the past 100 years and has increased for woman by three years (25.1). However, anecdotally it appears that the rate of marriage for professional people, especially women, is much higher than the average. Of all of the female lawyers within my age range that I know none were married before age 25 and only 2 were married before age 30. The story is not very much different for my male colleagues. This is not very surprising when you consider that at 25 many of us were still in college and at 30 many of us are still struggling to get out of the debt of student loans. Even more inhibiting is the fact that a 65 hour work week leaves little time for romance and socialising. For me, the free time that I do have I find is best spent resting in bed recovering from a long day and getting ready to face another day of work.

I think if there is a positive, if I was to get married I would certainly be too busy to have an affair. That is small consolation, and in any event moot because I’d never have the time to get married in the first place.

What I want is more time; I want to have time to catch up with my friends, to spend with my family, to go on trips during the weekend, even to go to the movies occasionally! I want more time to write my columns! I wanted to write about the dilemma of being a conservative but not having the ability to support conservative parties (because they are absolutely mad), but of course I had to work on Saturday and it’s now Sunday night and I have to get to bed to get to work. So I don’t have the time to write the column that I actually wanted to write. You see it is quite a pervasive thing this modern urgency, this marriage to work. It takes everything from you and offers little in return. Instead of a 2,500 word column about a serious topic, I only had enough time to write a 500 word column which admittedly is far lighter. However, although this column is not particularly long I wonder if you’ll have enough time to read it all.

Audley Hanna Jr., Esq