As so often happens during a permanent change of station, life has been filled with unexpected twists and turns that drinks up free time as fast as a thirsty man in a desert that ran across his first oasis in a hundred miles. There are the randomly (often inconveniently) placed meetings, changes of command ceremonies, tests, training events, paperwork lost by some office; the list goes on and on. I haven’t even started flying yet.
The silver lining to all of this is that at least we don’t live in the early industrial revolution period, where factory workers were often expected to work 12-16 hour shifts six days a week.
Of course, I work with a bunch of people who love their work (me included, but not quite to the extent some of my compatriots do). Over the past several years I’ve become used to twelve hour days, I just keep working until I have to quit to go to sleep. Somehow I manage to find tons of things to do. But then, my job doesn’t involve much manual or hard labor. Perhaps it should, I’d certainly be in better physical shape!
Luckily I have a loving and understanding wife who puts up with my work habits. But then, she works as much as I do, too!