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Work, Life, Balance

Pet Age Staff//January 2, 2014//

Work, Life, Balance

Pet Age Staff //January 2, 2014//

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The Publisher’s Letter as it is printed in the January 2014 issue of Pet Age

Every day, my wish is to win the lottery. It doesn’t have to be a lot of money, but enough to retire.

After I see that I haven’t won, once again, I snap back into reality, I have to carry on with my busy life and my busy work day. Every year I think I have a grasp on what’s going on in my life, but it’s hard to.

It’s one of the reasons I enjoy the New Year. While everyone likes to make resolutions or different changes in their life, for me it’s a reminder to make sure my life and my work is always in balance; that no matter what, you can’t be too far on one side.

I spent a lot of time this past year traveling, it’s something that takes up a lot of my time. But it is also something that I enjoy, being able to see so many people all over the country.

Though, at the same time, I have to make sure to spend equal parts of my time at home.

Recently, I took a class to be able to time races at my daughter’s swim meets. Even though I work constantly, I also try to be involved in as many things as I can with her, simply because of how fast she has grown up. I also try to help my wife out as much as possible, since she is running the whole household, and our family, pretty much by herself.

Now, I could go on all day about my family and the way I balance my life out, or at least try to, but why I bring it up is because it’s something we all need to think about constantly. It’s something I have to constantly remind myself. It’s something that we all try to remind ourselves at Pet Age. It’s something that my sales representatives sometimes forget, sometimes our editors forget and our designers forget. While it’s great that we are all hard workers, you need that balance.

We all have moments of just being in the working mentality and we push everything else aside.

I know running a store takes so much of your time, just as it takes so much time for me to run a magazine. But I find myself having to reevaluate priorities on an almost monthly basis. I want to travel more, I want to work longer hours, I want to do more, but it would be unfair to my personal life and my family. At the same time, there are days I want to spend all my time at home.

There are days though where it can’t be avoided. I just simply have to work late or go away for a long time on travel. Throughout the day though, no matter how long it is, you need to take a few minutes a day away from work. During that time, call your family if you can but also take time out for yourself. If you don’t recharge your batteries a bit, then your work is going to suffer from it.

So as we all come up with New Year’s Day resolutions of exercising, eating right, losing weight, whatever it may be, let’s not forget to continue the things we may forget about time from time.

Let’s continue to strive for that perfect work, life balance. Even though it continues to elude us at times, we can’t let that stop us from being the best person we can be and the best business owner we can be.

– Craig Rexford