I came home from work today feeling sorry for myself and walked into the house, calling ‘hello’ to DM who was in his office upstairs. Before I’d had chance to kick off my shoes from my dejected feet, he was downstairs saying ‘you’re home so early, the earliest I ever see you is in an hour or so…..what happened? Playing hookey?’.

What time was it when he wasn’t expecting me for another hour or longer? 6pm. Most people regard 6pm as a perfectly normal time to arrive home from work yet for me it’s so incredibly early that it shocked my partner. That’s just so depressing.

In fact I was ‘playing hookey’ because I’d finished a meeting only a couple of miles from my office at 5pm so technically I should have gone back to the office for 15 minutes as a minimum. I couldn’t face it though. I’ve had a couple of miserable days at work and all I wanted to do was get home to DM, especially as it’s still a novelty having him home from Le Mans. So, rather than go back to the office I jumped into my car and came home. I don’t feel guilty because I will be working until midnight tomorrow from a 9am start and so as far as I’m concerned a few minutes in my favour today is a small return on tomorrow’s day.

The balance between being ‘good’ and ‘bad’ can sometimes be a fine one and even though this may have been a ‘bad’ act, it was done to ensure I remained ‘good’ by not acting in haste about something that’s happened today. If I’d gone into the office, I may have done something that would have made me feel good but would certainly have had a bad effect.

Coupled with a shocking couple of days at work, A Foodie’s Dream is still at no 1 today (which should be regarded as good as I’ve paid my dues to the PotD bath club) and a stranger (newbie PBASE supporter) left three very strange and rather rude comments on it overnight. On balance I decided to erase them because they were clearly written by someone without much of a clue about life.

My real ‘balancing act’ of the day is, though, the balance of coming home from work at a time that most people would regard as ‘normal’. After all this time I still don’t seem to be able to find the right balance between work and home. One of my colleagues who reads my daily rantings once said to me that she loved my diary because it made her feel ‘not alone’ because of my tales of trying to juggle a difficult job with some degree of decent home life. She commented that my stories tell of someone who, despite long arduous hours, has the balance right in what I value. She’s right about what I value but wrong about getting the balance right and David’s comments about my arrival home from work demonstrate that well.

So, I sit at my desk tonight feeling chastened because I consider myself a person who ‘works to live’ rather than ‘lives to work’ and yet it’s regarded as a minor miracle that I’m at home at 6pm. I just can’t work out the answer to this one. I need to work but I can’t live with myself sometimes because of that. I let David down every time I come home late and let down the dogs and myself too. That’s depressing me even more than I was already.