Wiffing on a Wife

Editor's Note: No podcast today. My co-host is vacationing on the high seas.


If there is one thing that General Conference taught me this week, it's that I'm in desperate need of a wife. Surprisingly, I find myself agreeing with this specific advice from these general advisers. I could definitely use a wife.

Preferably one I really, really don't enjoy being around.

You know, someone who nags, has no personality, asks the same questions over and over (how was work? how was the commute? how was your day?).

My problem isn't that I hate happiness and desire misery. On the contrary. In an ideal world, I could even see myself having a wife that I enjoyed spending time with. It's just that in order to survive in the world I've created for myself, I will need to have a wife I truly despise.

You see, it's work that I hate. Jobs, careers, employment. There is no good that comes from this world. And believe me, once employed, work becomes a person's world. You are generally paid for forty hours of service rendered, but you're total time dedicated to work is much greater in reality. Adding an unpaid thirty minutes of lunch, an hour's worth of driving, and thirty minutes of work-related preparation (shaving, bathing, teeth brushing) to each day brings your total weekly work time commitment to 50 hours (or 10 hours a day). Match this with a supposed doctor prescribed eight hours of sleep daily and you are left with a mere 6 hours per day for the rest of your life, or in rhyming terms, time with your wife. That is assuming you spend no time away from your actual workplace dealing with your job.

With work requiring the majority of a person's time it is important that one enjoys what they do. Unfortunately, I chose accounting for a career, making that enjoyment factor an impossibility for me. Therefore the only way I see that work could be enjoyable (or at least tolerable), is by having my home life be even worse than my work life. Just as the Jazz's current season looks good in comparison to that of Cleveland or Minnesota (a combined 121 losses between the two), a miserable job could be a pleasure to go to when compared to an even more miserable home life.

Fortunately I figure it shouldn't be too difficult to get into an abominable marriage. How can married life not be tough and miserable? According to the gospel -- or at least hymn 27, Praise to the Man -- "sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven." I am often told that marriage is the number one blessing that can be received in life; shouldn't it also be the number one challenge? Certainly the greatest blessings available aren't just being handed out for free - they require a price. What the cost is for this particular blessing, I don't precisely know (I'll tell you once I'm married). But if you are prone to believe the words of my old golf course boss John Brubaker, the cost is one's life. "When a man gets married, he gets what he wants for a while," said John. "And then he dies."

Well that sounds very nice, at least as far as my work life is concerned. 
 
Then again I'm reminded of the words of another of my wise associates - the irrefutable Bunna Veth. Said he of being employed, "Humans: we're just not meant to work 8 hours a day."

I definitely like where he is going with that statement. Perhaps if I could manage to reverse the time ratios such that home life occupied ten hours a day while work merely accounted for six, then I could pursue a wife that would make me happy, as the majority of my time would be spent around her rather than the office. I like this scenario because under this plan my retirement could actually be something I look forward to. Hmm. This all presents a very tricky dynamic.

I could see myself being happy in this scenario

Of course while considering all this happiness and unhappiness, I wonder, could a person have both an enjoyable job and home life?

Yeah right. No one gets that lucky.