There are many advantages to being married to your business partner. I love the way that we weave family needs around the business needs. I love having brief business meetings as our paths cross in the kitchen. I love working with someone who loves my kids just as much as I do and who will actively encourage me to place their needs first. However it is not all sunshine and roses. Sometimes the business needs and the family needs compete in ways that leave me arguing, not with Howard, but with myself.
An example: The part of me that monitors family interactions and needs says that we need to take more vacations together as a family. We need to forcibly remove Howard and I from our offices so that we will just let it all go for a day or two. It would be good for us. However the business manager part of my brain knows that even minor events can cause a major disruption to our schedule. The schedule is what allows us to get so much done in a given day. It is the business manager’s job to defend the schedule so that the cartoonist can get stuff done. And so I argue with myself. Usually we end up downsizing the family events. Rather than a big weekend away, we plan little activities that fit into the open spaces of the schedule. In the long run these smaller activities are more reinforcing to the family structure than a single big trip, but they are not equivalent. Ideally the family would get to do both.
This past couple of weeks the schedule has been all skewampus with final book edits and family events. The rest of the month, and indeed the next couple of months, are clear of large events. This thought soothes the business manager enough that she is willing to contemplate a family weekend sometime in June. I should probably make reservations now while she’s feeling complaisant.