"It's only for now"

Very few people intend to work fifty-five hours a week for the rest of their career. If I'd asked you at any point in the last six years, you'd have told me the hours were temporary. There was the audit. After the audit came the merger, then the new housing system, and now the restructure. Once this is over, things will settle down, and you'll get back to something more normal.

I'd like you to look at that sequence from the outside. There have been six years of temporary periods, laid end to end, with no gap between them. Each one was truly busy, and you weren't wrong about any of them. But at some point a series of exceptions becomes the normal state of things. Organisations always have something going on. There'll be a next thing after the restructure, and you could probably name it already.

The belief that it's only for now is what allows the hours to go on. If you thought of fifty-five hours as your permanent working life, you might decide it was unacceptable and do something about it. Because it's always about to end, you never have to decide, and so the hours continue for years.

The belief hides a second thing, which is that the hours didn't fall when the busy periods ended. Think back to the week after the audit was signed off. You didn't go home at half past five that week. By then the long day was your routine, other work had flowed into the space, and you'd forgotten what leaving on time felt like. The busy period pushed the hours up, and afterwards habit kept them there.

Meanwhile the years being spent are particular ones. Ellie is nine. The stretch of her life in which she wants you at the side of the pool is perhaps five years long, and one of them has just gone. You can't postpone that stretch until after the restructure, because it runs at its own pace, and it's running now. The same is true, less visibly, of your own health, your friendships and your relationship with Sam. They've all been on hold since the audit, and none of them stays in good condition if it's neglected for years.

So I'd suggest you stop waiting for the quiet period. Work will never grant you one. If the hours are going to come down, it will be because you decide that they do, during a busy time, since it's always going to be a busy time.