There is no work-life balance
Image by Daniela Dimitrova from Pixabay
About ten years ago, I was the lead guitar player in a successful metal band called Meadows End. Playing on that level, including international tours, was something I had dreamt about since I was a little kid. A couple of thousand hours of hard work later I finally achieved my goal. The joy was unfortunately cut short. After only two albums, my life hit a fork in the road. I was writing my PhD thesis at the same time and had been under heavy stress for a long time. After many long conversations with my wife, and mental gymnastics on how to make it work even though it meant placing three suitcases (career, family and the band) in a baggage compartment that had room for two, I finally realized that I had to let go of one of them. That was the hardest decision of my life.
Moving on without a band was a new situation for me. I had never been without a band for as long as I have owned an electric guitar. But the time that was released from my schedule was badly needed. Today, eight years later, I found myself in the same situation with an equally grave decision. This time however, the whole process took one week from start to finish and not months. I´m a bit older and wiser now, and what I have learned is that it is actually extremely easy to make life-altering decisions on one prerequisite: That you know where you are going. If the direction is clear as crystal, all you need to do when you encounter a fork in the road is to look at the two (or three options) and evaluate which path will take you closer to your vision and start walking.
I simply look at what is best for my family. That is the foundation upon which everything is built. If the family parameter is shaky, everything – and I literally mean everything – comes crashing down sooner or later. If I am experiencing trouble at work, I am convinced that the problem is not with my work situation, but within myself. That is such a liberating idea; because it means that I can do something about it. If I believe that the problem does not lie within me and I am indeed a victim of the circumstances, well, what am I supposed to do about it then? It is beyond my power to change it. This little shift in my viewpoint, that everything is my own fault, is one of the most important lessons I have learned. There is no work-life balance. There are choices, and they have consequences. The end.
I have always enjoyed teaching. Maybe it has to do with the similarities of playing music, to convey a message from the stage? Throughout my whole career, since day one, I have always had one foot within academia and the other in the private sector. I have looked at it as my form of community service, and it has been a suitcase that I was proud to carry. In 2020 I finally realized another of my dreams when I was approved and enlisted as an associate professor in building technology at Umeå University. The recruitment process is out of this world. It felt like hitting the hole of a stationary needle while you were spinning on a carousel. The recruitment process took a full twelve (12) (!) months. But I made it through. So, of course there were a lot of feelings involved when I ended my career as a teacher today. From tomorrow, I will only have two suitcases that I need to place in a baggage compartment with room for two: Career and Family. I will focus everything on my partnership with Acouwood and give it all I got. And my foundation is more solid than a thick concrete slab.
In 2022 we implemented a new process at Acouwood that will integrate the discipline of acoustics fully into the building process. Acousticians have usually been doing their own race on the sidelines. Anyone working in the civil engineering sector will understand exactly what I mean. The key difference is that we are now using the same tools and methods as the other disciplines (Revit and dwgs). A drawing says more than a thousand words. I believe strongly in this change and before long, I envision us acousticians delivering material that the architects can import with one click in their BIM models instead of spending days interpreting ugly PDF files that resemble drawings made in MS paint. That will be a game changer. I have been seriously disturbed by this for more than a decade. Not anymore.
Paradigm shifts in the building process however, pales in comparison to the fork in the road that I ended up facing in January 2023: 1) No parental leave, or 2) Maybe no parental leave.
This, was the easiest decision I have ever made.