Work life balance

When I first started work, I was expecting to be at the office until at least 8pm regularly, and that's on a good day. It's the typical big law experience. Imagine my surprise when people at the office bounced at 6pm on the dot. I was even more surprised when my boss told me to go home if I didn't have any pressing matters. What kind of boss says that?!

In the past month I have realized that this is just how the firm culture is. People leave pretty close to normal business hours regardless of how much work they have. I am totally on board with that as long as I get my paychecks. See, to me law isn't really a passion but a means to an end. I like it enough and am decent at it, but what I really want is to get paid so I can do other fun things, like shop or travel. I care about how successful my career is, just not enough to dedicate my entire life to it.

I admire people who can sacrifice so much for their career, like my boss, the managing partner. He works so hard. He goes to networking functions almost every night after work, responds to emails at all times even on vacation, and wakes up at 5am involuntarily because he thinks about work unconsciously. As a result of his hard work, our office in Shanghai has annual billing hours comparable to our US counterparts, which is almost never the case for firms with foreign offices. But because of his dedication to work, he looks tired and stressed all the time. And his hair is all white even though I think he's barely 50.

I look at him and think, is it worth it??? YOLO man, I'm gonna enjoy it.