I "won" a whole sunny Sunday:
Google's User Helpdesk (if this is still the right word) doesn't work on Sunday.
Hahaha: so not only Germany has a problem with "Generation Z", whom most older people insinuate that they will only work on four days a week - (they told us so), because that is better for their work-life-balance (but with the same full payment as before). If it weren't so dreadful and sad we would recommend a look at the VW - people who want to work but might lose their jobs, horrible.
Google wants a work-life-balance too!
Totally energised I had decided to resolve the "no-photos-on-my-blog"-problem - today - but: see above.
So I'll take a long walk, and wish you a beautiful day too!
Work-life balance? I remember discussing that when the children still lived in the family home.
ReplyDeletePost-retirement, it doesn't mean as much.
Dear Helen, here in Germany the innocent term "work-life balance" has got an ironic touch: Germany is giving a lot of welfare money (called "Bürgergeld" - money for citizens) to people who need it: that is good.
DeleteBut they also give it to people who refuse every offered job, because it isn't "worthwhile" to work - with Bürgergeld they get almost as much. So they stay at home. Or come to Germany, to get it.
I really pity the people from Ukraine who got innocently into a war and had to flee.
A study shows that in Germany from the Ukrainians work only 18 % in a job, while in all other European countries two thirds of them or more (!!) have a job and do work. Here it is not as attractive, see above.
That Bürgergeld is for Germans who never worked before (young ones) and for refugees too.
I don't want to be misunderstood: I am glad that we help as much as we can - but if young German people see it as their right to get money because it is better to have "much life" and no work I get angry.
My dear Britta,
ReplyDeleteI hope you are having a good weekend. Many sincerest thanks for your kind and generous words on my blog. I'm very sorry to read about the problems with Google you are encountering. I notice that posting on blogspot has become very clumsy, tiresome and wearisome. As much as I do love to illustrate my blog with images (like a journal or a scrapbook where image and text co-exist as one, supporting and reinforcing one another), I dread the time when I have to upload and edit the images and text because the template is very unforgiving and inflexible.
However, every time I say to myself that I won't do it again, something moves through me and I have to do it for a creative outlet. I often think of it as writing a letter to my best friend who has the patience of a saint. I hope that you may also be able to see it as writing a letter as and when time permits (with or without images).
We shall always be here and waiting for your sweet words which always warm my heart. But I absolutely understand that your dance cards are always full these days. I believe that you are a giving person and you give all who need. It is important to learning to preserve your energy so that we can contribute to the world even if it is a very small and quiet part is reasonable and practical adjustment. I just imagine how much more will we appreciate you when you can post a paragraph or a line like an unexpected, surprised gift...I count it as a gift through a creative work, whether on the screen or in the pages of a book or on the canvas.
You cannot imagine how much I appreciate your friendship which always touches me (such a generous and kind soul you are) and you give me back tenfold whatever I am able to give to you - flaws and all! Thank you with all my heart for your responses to my meagre efforts and they truly mean the world to me as they feed my soul.
After we have been writing here for awhile, we have found ourselves in a community. It has been rewarding, however difficult or exasperating with technology, for meeting a kind and erudite person like you. The road ahead in service of beauty, and a peaceful future is less lonely if we travel with a companion/a kindred-spirit like you.
With warmest wishes, ASD
Dear ASD, I thank you so much for your very kind comment, and am stunned and very happy. Thank you!
DeleteYes: writing a letter and blogging sometimes is very much alike. (By the way: I regret that the art of writing letters is diminishing so quickly - how happy I am to have three huge folders with letters of my late friend Anne - starting in the days of our studies and then following us through our life! )
Handwriting, beautiful paper - the envelopes sometimes decorated as little works of art (by another friend: lovely! )
Nowadays if one is lucky there comes a mail - or a WhatsApp (I learned that there one should not greet the other with his/her name - I don't care and still do it - I love good manners).
Your posts are so beautiful and inspiring that they really are that: letters (though I do love the walk to the letterbox, the joy to see an envelope, to open it, to feel the sheet in your hand and to see the handwriting (for I while I even added a drop of perfume) - telling so much about the state of mind the writer is in at the moment of writing.
And paper forced us to think before writing - otherwise one had to write anew - "how tarsome" Georgie from E.F. Benson would say to Lucia - now one deletes a few words (that Google sometimes write before I have written have one).
So: thank you, my dear friend, and I will read your posts as that what they are: beautiful gifts.
Work-life balance for me meant deciding at 2 in the morning that the other emails would have to wait, and trying not to spend too long catching up at weekends. I suppose these days people have to look after their mental health.
ReplyDeleteDear Tasker, that is a nice version of work-life balance! Though at 2 in the morning (I have to say it, though sounding like a mother :-) you should sleep! (I wake up in the woolf's hour around 3 or 4 - and hate that...)
DeleteNot to get lost in the Internet is "life".
Work life balance is something a lot of us in demanding jobs had to postpone to some misty future! It's not great, props to people who go for a balance.
ReplyDeleteDear Boud, I do understand perfectly what you mean! I enjoy retirement now - though I loved my demanding and sometimes exhausting work too and felt lost for about 2 years after retirement - though I am a busy person creating new chances to create.
DeleteA lovely day to you. In your beautiful surroundings it should not be difficult.
ReplyDeleteDear Mimmylynn, I agree: the pastoral surroundings here in Bavaria give me a lot - and I am interested every day to see the change in nature (when some city-friends ask whether it isn't boring). I love Berlin life too - so I am always curious.
DeleteI had to post a list on my wall of Gen's Alpha, Z, Millennials, X, etal, just to keep track of perceived idiosyncrasies. I've concluded their turns will come and it will be what they perceive is the best way to make a living.
ReplyDeleteDear Joanne, I mix all those labels too - and am against labelling persons. They change the names even more quickly now, it seems to me!
DeleteI agree with your words that youth will create a future of their own (as we did too, if our elders liked it or not). But I speak of those who really exploit the very generous welfare system here - I believe that work (any work) and self-worth are correlated . To hang around thinking it is your right (!) to be fed by the "working idiots" as they call us is not ok.
I am not sure that I differentiate anymore between work and life - they feel one and the same as a writer. But I'm aware the ability to follow our chosen path is a rare privilege - in a sense, how lucky am I.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree - artists and writers are privileged to combine work and life. And that was the thing that saved me after retirement - though for two years I admit I struggled with not working in the old way any longer.
Deletethen also I had a lot to do, that was not the problem - but I was raised to see the "instant pay check" as recognition, and writing a book needs more time... And I missed my colleagues - writing is a beautiful but lonely job.
Dear Rosemary, I see the resemblance in our lives.
ReplyDeleteI also was/am ambitious and worked a lot too, as husband, and so we had to move house very often - only when we got our son we lived for almost 20 years in one place in a beautiful old house we bought.
Looking back I do not regret the time I worked. But I was lucky that I changed for the time of our son's childhood (20 years :-) to a half-time job (even then making some steps in my career). Of course often one was a bit exhausted - but very content too!