I don’t know whether it’s because of the time of year, or whether it’s because I’m generally relaxing more, but I seem to be a lot more tired at the moment. Back in the summer, I’d get up early, do a couple of hours of chores round the house, reply to emails, then do eight and a half hours’ work, then go to the gym, walk the two miles back, and make dinner before yet another round of email checking.

These days the thought of doing all that makes me want to sleep for about a year. My gym membership has expired, I’m not making as much money, and to be honest I don’t really care as much as I thought I probably would. I still feel lazy for watching TV in the evenings, but speaking to one of my friends about it at the weekend, her view is that it’s just my body telling me I need to relax. That makes sense to some degree and has made me feel a whole lot better; having said that, taking photos, playing Settlers of Catan and writing a blog entry last night gave me a lot more enjoyment than watching TV. The flip side is also that it’s quite a bit more effort ;) But I deserve a break. I’ve worked insanely hard this year, it’s been incredibly stressful in a lot of different ways and I’ve not been away for any kind of holiday, so if I want to hibernate and squirrel myself away for a bit, I will.

A random unrelated photo I took in the summer

I’m still yet to find the elusive balance, because I’m quite extreme either way. The problem is that it leads to cycles of hyperproductivity followed by inevitable crashing as I end up doing too much without even realising it. The work/life balance has always been a tricky one for me, and even though I love where I work and what I do (an indescribable improvement on previous jobs), I find it very difficult to switch off. Not least because a lot of what I see and do directly correlates to my personal interests and projects. Which, you know, is mostly an advantage – I know I’m incredibly lucky to get paid for doing what I love – it’s just that occasionally it gets a bit much.

A lot of people say, ‘Oh I’d love to get paid for sitting on Facebook and Twitter all day’. Aside from the fact that it’s not all I do, it’s not that easy, and it’s not (always) as good as it sounds. This week I’ve been teaching someone what I do on social media on a hour-by-hour, situation-by-situation basis, and I seriously never realised how complicated that aspect of my job really is. There are so many different decisions to make and actions to take per comment and tweet that I just take for granted. It’s not easy to get a grip on the technical industry knowledge required, the marketing tactics needed, the imagination in what you’re saying and ideas for contests and campaigns, creating a social media strategy to suit other promotions and campaigns happening, the skills in wording and phrasing, the investigative skills, the memory test of who people are and what their opinion is of the company, and of course supporting, selling to, and generally building relationships with people all within short messages. Not to mention actually working with internal departments to ask, answer and generally communicate a lot of different things on a lot of different levels. In addition to all that, in-depth knowledge of the web industry is required – that means everything from design to development to business to SEO to all kinds of in-jokes, geek jokes and pop culture references. If you’re coming to it all brand new, it’s a massive learning curve. If I were coming to it all today, I would have no idea where to start. Even after 12 years of being heavily involved in everything web I still feel overwhelmed/in awe at times.

What I’m saying is on display for the whole world to critique, complain about, or offer suggestions on how it could be better. If I looked at it and thought about it that way I’d probably never say anything. Contrary to popular belief, the hardest thing isn’t people yelling abuse at you. The hardest situations are where I fundamentally agree with what someone is saying myself, but I have to convey the other side of the situation or explain the reasons why something is the case. There’s nothing harder than convincingly presenting a viewpoint you simply don’t agree with. Anyone who thinks my job is easy should come and try it for a couple of days. It’s incredibly hard work, even though it’s generally very rewarding.