I've used the word "balance" quite a lot on this forum over the last few months, but balancing work and writing is where I really struggle.
My work fluctuates a lot, and this means the time available for writing fluctuates with it - but in the opposite direction, of course. Over the last few years I've had quite a lot of months that average out over 70 work hours per week - and I don't count the hours spent maintaining my own business and computer systems and so on.
I know from some of those that I interact with for my work that my work hours are not particularly unusual, so I always feel a bit ashamed when I grumble (but I do anyway). I also know from long experience that things might turn around at any time and leave me with very little work - so I don't really have much choice but to take it while it's available. Balance barely comes into it.
But I have, in the last few months, been trying to extract a bit more time for myself (and so my writing), despite continuing pressure for work. But it is difficult to do, and runs into a related problem...
A few years ago I was airing my grievances in this regard and Nancy Fulda
observed:
Quote:
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It's a very strange thing, but programming seems to tug at the same creative wells as writing does. When I code intensively, my fiction output drops, and not just because of time constraints.
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This certainly seems to match my experience.
But while programming tugs at the same creative resources, it doesn't fill the same need nor offer the same satisfactions, and so my compulsion to write sits frustrated until I can make time to get back to it.
All of which brings me to what you said about writing being a relaxing hobby. I wish I could say that was always true, but I can't. ... And it's all my own fault. I have no deadlines for my writing; it doesn't actually matter if it takes weeks or months or years or never. But it does matter to me.
It's why I can relate to the various, usually tongue-in-cheek (at least, ostensibly so), posts about being addicted to writing. I've had a taste of what it's like when the writing really starts working, and I want more! The fact that my work (the kind that actually puts food on the table) gets in the way of my getting more is very frustrating and keeps pushing the cycle of stress over my writing. It's quite silly. Intellectually I can see that very clearly, but changing how I feel about it is something else again.
... And then I add to it by spending time here on MobileRead complaining about it all.
I can hear a tiny violin somewhere playing a sad tune just for me.