I love to cook. Really. Chopping things. Sautee-ing things. Turning a bunch of ingredients with flavors and charicteristics all their own into a single coherent flavor that exceeds what the ingredients offer separately. I’ve got a caserole in the oven right now for our party tomorrow. I’m getting ready to go whip up a couple of homemade dips. And I’m working on a great bottle of red wine while I go.

But in this mile-a-minute life, it seems like I almost never have the time. Why is that? Why is it that my father was able to get home every day by 5:30p but I don’t ever seem to get home before 7:00p. (And that’s assuming I get to the office by 7:30a or so.)

It’s not that I’m bitter. Just curious. Why do we all seem to work so much harder than our parents? Why — with all of our technology — does life seem to have gotten more complicated, instead of more convenient?

Sometimes I think it’s due to the choices I’ve made. I live in a big city and work a big city job. But the more I talk to folks in other places, the more I realize it isn’t just me. What’s up? What’s changed?

Cam: Heck, I used to be home by noon. Of course, I was at work at 4:00 a.m. Now I leave the house at 8 a.m. and get home around 7 p.m. I’m lucky enough to have a wife that stays at home with our children (how cro-magnon of me, I know), and she’s also a wonderful cook. Even the diet we’ve been on for the past two weeks hasn’t been that bad, because she can do amazing things with what we get to eat. When I was single, I lived on sandwiches and Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. I’m surprised I never came down with scurvy, to be honest.

As to why we’re working longer hours than ever… I’m tempted to wait until Pajama bin Bloggin’ chimes in, but I won’t. We’re working longer than ever because the companies we work for can get away with it, in my opinion (I’m not referring to my specific company, mind you, just companies in general). But here’s what I’d like to know: what would happen if our workplace society reverted back to how it was in the 1970’s? Would it have a disastrous effect on the economy? Or would we be better employees because we have a life outside of the office?

You know, of the three, you’re the only one with a real “office job”. I host a talk show, which allows for lots of unstructured time. Jim’s a professional blogger, which allows for unlimited unstructured time (except when he’s writing bestselling books). You need to join the ranks of the creatively employed!

Jim: Great conversation starter, Marshall. No pun intended, but you’re offering a lot of food for thought.

1) Whenever some union official or regular administration critic laments that we haven’t seen enough wage growth since the early 1960s, I wonder if these folks ever think about the law of supply and demand as it relates to labor. I’m not talking about illegal immigration; I’m talking about the great social change that began a bit before we were born and accelerated through our childhood – women leaving the home and joining the workplace. That great change, in effect, nearly doubled the available workforce in America. Dramatic increase in workers + only slight increase in jobs = lower wages. Wages get set when the employer can no longer find somebody willing to work cheaper.

So it has been tougher to be a worker in America today than in a generation or two past, because employers now have a large number of workers of both sexes to choose from. Employers can expect more.

If, as Cam imagines, suddenly half the population were to drop out of the rat race to become full-time homemakers and parents, American employers would be in shock, and would desperately need to increase wages to get the now-scarce workers. It will never happen, but it is fun to think about.

2) It seems commuting times are a lot longer now; I’m stunned at what is now normal in Washington D.C.. It’s hard to imagine there once were company towns where you lived within walking distance of the factory. There also were downtowns, where your bank, (with no ATMs!) grocer, dry cleaner, convenience store, deli, bakery, etc. were all next door to each other. Now we have office parks, mini-malls, the Fine, Fine Institution that is Wal-Mart and other “big box” stores, etc. Just running errands and getting things done in your life takes more time now than it used to, because you live further from your work, and everything you need in the course of the day is more spread out.

3) The biggest reason we – as in the three of us, not the world at large – are working harder: We’ve chosen professions that are not… well, normal. Radio, consulting, journalism – each of these fields are enormously competitive, and none of us have Tim Russert as a dad to help us out. You get ahead and succeed by working your ass off. If we adamantly insisted upon working only 9 to 5 and not a minute more, none of us would be where we are today.

I also wonder if my personal experience has given me an odd, and perhaps bad, sense of reinforcement. By far, the hardest and longest I have worked – other than some drudge shifts at CQ – was during the Kerry Spot days, posting as soon as I woke up, all day long, and often well into the night. The week the Rather memos broke, Mrs. TKS was away on business, so there was no one to tell me, “Jim, turn off the computer and go to sleep.” So I didn’t stop until the adrenalin stopped – sometimes 2 a.m. The payoff was huge – I’m gazing at Rather’s head that’s stuffed and mounted on the wall as I type this – but the lesson was clear. I’m not the biggest name, I don’t have the best sources, I’m not the most well-connected, but I do have an edge, an obsessive-compulsive work ethic, and readers will gravitate to my 20 updates a day over the other guy’s two.

I think – and hope – that as you climb the ladder, you get more ability to set your own hours and restore a sense of work/rest-of-life balance. Having said that, I think that this is something of a new phenomenon in American life, and I’m not sure how sustainable it is.