Here we go again

It's that time of year when we ask ourselves the two vital questions: "What have we done?" and "What next?" Did you finally get your work/life balance sorted out? Will it be this year? What is the correct ratio for the achievement of balance in one's life? 50/50? seems a little neat and not very practical. One of the key problems is that you spend a large percentage of your "Life" factor in bed asleep, thus wasting perhaps 50% of your down time on getting your head down. So you try insomnia to help make the most of your awake time only to find that clients/contacts/students start emailing and facebooking you at 4 in the morning. Now your work/life balance is really skewed/screwed. So you spend more time out of the office, working from home, hoping that Gmail will act as a moderating channel between you and the world and only to find that your nifty Blackberry never shuts up twittering and muttering at you. I'm driving to a meeting, it twits. I'm in the loo, it twits. I'm going out of my mind, it twits. There it goes again. Work/Life balance my arse. I must be crazy to even audit my work life balance. Look waht happened to Dudley Moore in the film Crazy People. He's an ad man who has a Jerry McGuire moment and say's "I know what we'll do: we'll tell the truth about products and services in our ads." They end up locking him away in an asylum. I hope there's room for me. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em I say. If we all end up living in a "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" wardened controlled home for retired ad and marketing people, perhaps the world would be a better place. No-one to make the general populace suffer from coms-induced status anxiety about the lack of funds required to purchase the latest ipod. No aspiration-crushing demonstrations of ad campaigns designed to underscore your oh-so-obvious inability to have it all (the footbal clubs, old masters, gargantuan houses, helicopter-toting yachts, private aiforce, top gear wheels, faberge eggs for breakfast etc etc. No it is easier to just join the nutters asap. The more, the merrier.