Ready for Christmas

I'm probably looking forward to this Christmas more than any other since I was a kid.

When I was working I was always so busy. Christmas just seemed to get in the way of my busiest business times of the year. I hate to say it. It sounds terrible. But it's true.

I've always worked long hours all of my life, too long.

Once I worked somewhere over 50 days consecutively, including Sundays, and I worked 12 to 14-hours a day. Hundreds of color corrections, masks and silhouettes, stripping photos of models into photos of landscapes, I needed to make an impossible deadline, and I did. Then I collapsed.

For newspapers I've worked every time of the day or night, any day of the week, to cover events, meetings, you name it.

I've always taken my work home, tweaked and edited and re-did things until I felt I could be proud of presenting a design, illustration, or photograph. I was my own toughest critic. But at the same time was always very interested in my craft, and continually improving and keeping up with ever-changing technology.

And when I finally started my own business I was a one-man show, so it was record-keeping and customer service and sales and fulfillment and well, you get the picture.

Although I find great virtue in those who are passionate about their work and put in endless hours (and there are a lot of us) - I think we work too hard.

Looking back, yes hard work offered me positive life experiences that helped me learn and helped me build certain characteristics. Yes, hard work helped make me successful and offer me a home, a family, a meal, a chair to sit-in.

But it also led to me thinking that Christmas was more of a nuisance than anything else. And that's not good.

Now that I'm "retired" I have the time to see Christmas a little more like I did when I was a kid. The magic, the warmth, the giving, the sharing - I'm moving slow enough that I can soak-in the meaning of the season. My uncle always said, "You can see more in a canoe then you can a speed boat."

We work harder, and longer hours, than just about any country in the world, perhaps with the exception of a few asian countries.

There are rewards in hard work. But it is important to have balance.

This Christmas, don't forget to take the canoe, rather than the speed boat, soak-in all the blessings around you, enjoy the comfort offered through your friends and family.

Work will be there waiting for you.