• Home
  • |
  • Blog
  • |
  • You can’t keep it at the office

You can’t keep it at the office


Select Dynamic field

Keep it at the office?

How many times have you heard something along the lines of “don’t bring work home” or “your personal life has no business at the office”?  Look, I get it.  Your employers want you to focus on the subject at hand, and your family life deserves a certain amount of privacy.  But I fear that in the process of trying to keep the various aspects of our life separate, we unintentionally end up compartmentalizing ourselves.

Instead of allowing ourselves to focus on either work, or our family at the appropriate times, we end up creating two different personas.  We have our “work self” and our “home self”.

There have been times when I have observed the office persona of someone I knew in my personal life.  It’s unnerving.  I barely recognized them.  I realize this may sound hyperbolic, but the whole concept reminds me of Voldemort’s horcruxes.  You know, break yourself in more than one piece, and your entire soul is weakened.  It doesn’t protect you, it makes you more vulnerable.

Life imitates life

Here’s the deal, the things that happen in your life cannot be put into neat and tidy boxes and wrapped up with bows.  Life is legit hard sometimes and if you have a mess in one part of your life, it is going to spill out and affect other parts.  It’s just the way it is.

You can’t abuse your family and be a model citizen at work.  You can’t lie, cheat, and steal at work but be a person of integrity at home.  You either have integrity or you don’t.  Period.

Two years ago I was battling postpartum depression and my little blog here all but died.  I began to find comfort and strength in photography and videography.  And what happened?  My homeschool blog began to talk a lot about photography and video.

I could have tried to stay on point.  Talk about homeschooling even though it was the very last thing on my mind, but that wouldn’t have been true to who I was and the reality of my experiences.  In fact, this blog post is an assignment for my entrepreneurship class at BYU-I.  Do you think for a second that I’m not drawing from my personal life to make connections in my business life?  Of course I am!  I only have ONE life!

As a woman in a creative field I am privileged enough to be able to embrace my emotions and use them to fuel my passions and creativity.

This is a self-portrait I took not too long ago.  I was having a very rough day and wanted to document my experience the best way I knew how.

I took several images of how I was feeling (sad, frustrated, scared), and then I took a few of how I wanted to feel: Beautiful, strong, and a force to be reckoned with.  That exercise allowed me to push through some of the pain I was going through and concentrate on other parts of my life that needed attention.

  

Be all that you can be

I guess what I’m saying is this: Don’t hide from who you are.  And if you are not the woman you want to be, model the woman you do want to be in all areas of your life.  If you want to be a strong woman, do strong things.  If you want to be brave, do brave things.  If you want to be righteous, do righteous things.

Related Posts

Courtney Ahroon

09/17/2021

Spiced Drink

Spiced Drink

Courtney Ahroon

01/02/2021

Adam

Adam

Courtney Ahroon

01/02/2021

I’ll Make Runners Of Them Yet

I’ll Make Runners Of Them Yet

Courtney Ahroon

09/27/2020

Stuffing Envelopes

Stuffing Envelopes