Should there be a life outside work?

My boss has been hospitalized since last Monday, he had aortic aneurysm. Looks like he will be off work for quite a long time. During his absence, I've taken over part of his duties, and tried to manage doing my work while handling the added workload. Though it is tough, and I often find that a million things are still undone by the time I go home, it is a challenge and I enjoy this process.

My boss is a funny person, and he is the type of person whom one would like to be friends with. However, when it comes to work, he is very uptight and takes things very seriously and personally. Often times, he works from home on the weekends. There were a few weekends I would get a call from him at 7am Saturday morning, when I just got in at 2am from a late dancing night!

My boss's unfortunate incident makes me wonder a few things:
1/ should there be a life outside work?
2/ why do people need to bring work home? Is this the norm in the current society?

I learnt the hard way of not bringing work to home. It took me almost three years to have a life outside work. I used to work 6 days a week, at least 13 hours a day. When I got diagnosed of ovarian tumour in 2002, I went in for an extensive surgery, as a result, I was off work for 6 weeks. During those 6 weeks, I slowly came to the realization that there IS a life outside work. It was a painful realization. When I went back to work, I slowly cut back on my hours and started getting active socially. I got myself a gym membership, started looking for a companion (well, not men, but dogs!), and developed an interest in going to museums and orchestras.

I used to go to the office on the weekends to finish up what was left behind on Fridays. Well... I was single back in those days, and being a single gal in a new city... instead of going out and meet boys (some of my coworkers from Vancouver did that every week for the first two years in Ottawa), I chose to buried myself in pile of endless work. Sometimes, I even brought work home and worked on Sundays after church. At that time, my Braun coffeemaker is my soulmate.

My medical condition in 2001 served as an awakening to me. It had really put my life in perspective. Had I kept working the same way I used to be, here is a list of things that could have possibily happened:

1. heart attack -- as I have Type A personality
2. I would still be single today... how would I have time to meet Joe and manage to spend weekends in Kingston with him?
3. I would have never adopted Bee Bee, my lovely 4 1/2-year-old Shih Zhu!
4. I would never have time to think about getting a second Shih Zhu... just that I need to convince Joe we need a second furry ball named Boo Boo in the house! (ok confession: it is not a need, but more or less a want!)