When I was growing up, my dad was something of a workaholic. That’s not to say that he wasn’t around for stuff—he was—but he went to work early and worked all day and often went back to work again in the evenings or on the weekend. Even now, he is “retired,” which for a normal person would mean they no longer work. For my father, it means he continues working regular-to-long hours when he doesn’t have anything else on his schedule. The good news is that he often has other important activities on his schedule for which he does eschew work—things like going skiing for the afternoon or taking a trip to visit the grandkids.

One thing my dad still does, though, is go to the office on Sunday nights to “prepare for the week.” And one thing I still do is torment him mercilessly about it. “That’s what Monday is for,” I always tease him. “You’re wasting perfectly good weekend! Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

Well, I should say I used to tease him about it. Until I realized that I’ve started doing the same thing. The only difference, I guess, is that instead of driving across town on Sunday night, I only have to walk into the next room. And I hardly even realized I’d started doing it, too. It was like I hit a certain age and some time-delayed device went off in my brain. “Now is when you develop the insatiable need to get ready for the week on Sunday night. Chop chop!”

(Damn you, Dad! How did you do that??)

When I first started freelancing, I worked constantly. That was bad; when people talked about this mysterious “life balance” thing I would giggle hysterically, usually because I was operating on about four hours of sleep and three cups of coffee. Let me repeat: Bad.

As I settled in to my new career, I began to actively work on balancing things. My eleventh commandment became “Thou shalt remember the weekend and it keep it holy.” And generally speaking, I dedicated my weekend to the kids, and didn’t do a lick of work. This was better, but not perfect—as is (I think) pretty common, I’d completely forgotten to carve out any time for myself.

I’d say I hit my groove about a year ago, and in doing so I made a conscious decision to only work half a day on Fridays. The other half of the day is mine. Sometimes I run errands. Sometimes I read a book. Sometimes I do more or less nothing at all. It doesn’t matter; the point is that for a few hours on Friday afternoons, before the kids get home from school, that’s my “me time” before I spend the weekend with my husband and children.

It’s a common lament in our household that I’m annoyed with myself for becoming addicted to Mad Men, which airs at 10:00 on Sunday nights (and means we don’t go to bed until after 11, which is a bit later than we often intend). We record it, and it’s easy enough to watch it another time, but I really like to watch it right away so that I don’t encounter any spoilers online before I’ve done so. But it’s unwittingly helped me to organize myself around that “time off” I take on Friday: The kids go to bed early on Sundays, which means I sit down and do some work starting at about 7:30. By the time Mad Men comes on at 10:00, I’m ready for Monday, and I still get to spend an hour away from work before I go to bed.

And it means that I’m not utterly crazed on Monday morning, playing catch-up. It’s perfect, really.

But I still reserve the right to tease my father for driving across town every Sunday night.