The World is Flat

Its sunday afternoon and I'm sitting at work. I have a very long list of tasks I MUST complete today because our client needs them at 9am tomorrow. I did about 2 hours of work yesterday, and on thursday i pulled an all time high of 18 billable house ( this means I subtracted lunchtime and wasted random time from the total time I was at work). I clearly should be working but I had to put down this thought before I forget it. Leaving work at 4am is clearly not healthy. I got into a discussion with a friend after seeing "Why did I get married" because Im worried that I'm becoming the lawyer chick and she said to me " well youre on vacation. you should not do work on vacation" but then what if there is no one else to do the work?

Interestingly, I'm reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman and one of his points is that kids need to find careers in which they have a value-add: something no one else can bring. Someone else said that the only way you have job security is if you do something no one else can do. And i dont really mean absolutely no one else in the universe is capable of doing your task, but the only way you can be absolutely certain you have something to do is if youre the only one who does it. Simple enough right?

But if youre the only one who can do something, anything, then youre the only that can do it. Say goodbye to vacation, silent Blackberrys, etc. I'm sure there is a balance somewhere, there has to be, but I cant find it. Everyone on my team, from the lowest of the low to the most senior person in the organization has been workingon this around the clock. What happened to being asleep at 2am?

I love what I do, I honestly do, I just dont know if it gives me space to love anything (or anyone) else.