Another lost weekend...

I created the post below on Monday night, September 7th, after having devoted yet another holiday weekend to the real estate business instead of to family and friends and enjoying the moment. I suppose it was cathartic at the time; but I did not post it then, because I was already down enough about working through the weekend. The real message here is to try harder to achieve some balance in life between work and family, between the reason you think you are working and taking time to actually enjoy those reasons. I need to do better at that.

There was a 1945 film called The Lost Weekend, starring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman and based upon a best selling novel about the travails of an alcoholic who goes on weekend binges. I suppose that if someone wanted to they could write a novel called Another Lost Weekend about a workaholic Realtor spending yet another holiday weekend away from friends and family while trying to sell a house. How sad. I just spent another of those lost weekends trying to cement a deal and I’ve started to regret it. I regret not spending more time with my wife, not getting away somewhere for the last weekend of summer, not taking some time to enjoy the fruits of the labor that seem so all consuming at times. We are in a crazy business and if one doesn’t try awfully hard to avoid it, the business can consume all of the time that we have. You have to step back every now and then and ask yourself what you are working all those hours for, if you never take any time off to enjoy life?

I have a very understanding and very long-suffering wife who puts up with me and my crazy schedule more than she should have to. Not everyone has that level of spousal cooperation and understanding and I suspect that there are many divorces that can be laid at the doorstep of being overwhelmed by the time demands of the business. Like a black hole, the real estate business sucks up whatever time there is with something to do. If you let it, it will literally consume 24 hours in every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. If traded stories with old, retired (burned out) realtors who reported leaving their families on Christmas day to go show a house. That’s just crazy! Yet it happens.

So I just lost another Labor Day weekend working on a deal. Was it worth it? If it closes I’ll make some money 20-30 days from now, but I won’t ever get the three days that I just lost back. I’ll never get to go on that picnic that I didn’t go on or play with my grandchildren at the park or just sit and relax on my front porch. I’ve lost that and that’s just sad. It’s weekends like this that make me stop and think about whether what I’m doing is really worth it – not just the money aspect, but the quality of life aspect, too. I do enjoy many things in the business, just not lost weekends.