What is Weisure?

When I have get-togethers at my faboosh apartment, me and my friends love to bring out Table Topics. It's a cube filled with cards with questions on them to start conversation. Questions vary from, "Which celebrity would you most like to see in person?" to "If you had the means how would you address the problem of homelessness?"

But my favorite question of all these questions is, "What historical time period would you most like to visit?" Most of the time I answer Victorian age mainly because I love their dresses (and also because I had the American Girl doll Samantha growing up and I loved her stories/bedroom accessories). But these days I really think I'd like to be transported to the 50's.

All this 50's mumbo jumbo came up while I was reading an article on CNN about this new phrase workers have coined called "weisure time". This phrase pertains to the new work-lifestyle in which the 9-to-5 workday has started to become non-existent. Meaning everyone works all the time and they add in fun/playtime to their workday instead of vice versa.

NYU sociologist Dalton Conley coined the phrase and commented to CNN that, "Increasingly, it's not clear what constitutes work and what constitutes fun." He goes on to say that the two are becoming ambiguous and that worlds that once had very distinct lines are now being blurred.

Which brings us back to the '50s, where Conley remarks that there were "certain rules" in business - that people didn't do business with friends and people kept their social lives very far away from their social spheres.

Sometimes I wished we still lived in that era - where there were distinct lines - a world where we didn't update our statuses from minute to minute on the Internet, and times where taking a vacation really meant taking a vacation.

These days we have personal computers, Blackberrys and iPhones attached to our hands, and social media allows us to easier interact with one another throughout the day to the point where there really is no excuse NOT to be in touch with work (even on the weekend). Conley says this is world that creative types (aka PR, marketing, advertising peeps) are already very much submerged in. They use social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to conduct work and they go to cocktail parties to do business. Conley thinks eventually everyone will become accustomed to this being the norm for all sectors of business and not just creative careers.

I'll admit that I'm guilty of mixing work and pleasure. Two years ago on Hoboken's St. Patrick's Day I fielded a multiple calls on a Saturday while I had over 20 people in my apartment drinking mimosas and playing Asshole because we had people at an off-site conference and I was the go-to girl for questions. Have I checked my email when I come home from work? Absolutely. Have I taken work home on a weekend? Definitely. And I mean come on people! I have a blog about work. If that isn't blurring the line of work and leisure then I don't know what is.

I committed the crime of combining work and pleasure. And it seems that our generation will blur the line even more as social media gets stronger and we start to combine work and play even more.

Sometimes I wish we still lived in the 50's, but then I remember that I would fail at making great cherry pies, I would probs have to quit my job after I got preggers, and I would really miss Twitter.

Which reminds me, follow us on Twitter (@workinggirlone & @workinggirltwo)! I love shameless plugs.

Take Me Out Tonight?

These days, there are some weekends that I don't even go out one night. In college, I'd go out four nights a week. Now, sometimes it's rare that I go out once. It's not that I don't like people anymore or that I don't like spending time with my friends. It's that going out almost always involves drinking and my body has officially raised a white flag when it comes to recovering from a night of drinking.

Tonight, I found myself torn. I went to the Mets game with some friends and enjoyed a hot dog and a few beers. I stopped myself there. My friends wanted to go out once we got back to Manhattan. Usually, I'm all about it. I like to go with the flow and have fun with my friends. But, although tomorrow is Friday and it's usually a slower and more quiet day in the office, I still have a lot to get done and I'd like to be at 100% for that. Thankfully, my body is still processing three beers for me. (I did go to the bar, nursed a beer and enjoyed the company of my friends.)

There have been several times in the past that I haven't controlled myself so well and a couple of drinks turned to many and that turned into a hangover. A little part of me, two years later, is still in college mode. That part is saying "have another drink, have fun; you'll be fine tomorrow." Sometimes I give in because it is fun. But when I wake up the next morning and have to go to work or get up on a weekend and be productive (whether it's running errands or visiting family), it's not so fun.

I've turned into more of a homebody because of this internal dilemma and while I love a quiet and relaxing night in, a few to many of those can cause me to feel lonely. I need to find a way to make my socializing work for me. I want to have fun, keep a nice social calendar and not have it hold me back in any aspect of my life.