Contrast and Compartmentalization

The airline ad tells me to embrace my spontaneity; the holiday chocolate foil says to open my eyes to all the love around me, and another one says to exercise my heart today. I have never regretted acting on impulse, and I wistfully recall several youthful months in Europe guiding myself with a mantra of "No Regrets," yet I have regretted ignoring impulse. But the older I get the more I am sure these messages are for people with more means, less time lapse on the margins of error and planning.
In the past week or so I have made valentines, sung songs to plants, stayed in bed half a day, made friends with a sea witch, danced with strangers, drank rum with someone who brings out the best in me, walked at twilight, harassed a friend or two by text and wrote a letter back to a former student who wrote to tell me he had so much fun he's 7 now. And these things, all, were part and parcel to fun or the pursuit of it. But not a bit of it happened on impulse. It all required some planning or sacrifice or intention, and it all was pleasant but not earth-shattering.
By contrast, in the past week I have, of course, worked. I helped kids pulverize paper scraps to make paper, taught them to seal an envelope with a kiss, traipsed to a post office for stamps, took tea with seniors and spotted a peregrine falcon on a winter perch. I left a trail of hearts, wrote notes for lunchboxes, ordered books for school, paid bills, donated clothes and got recruited to help with a school auction. Work. Less sacrifice and planning, more requirement, yet oddly more fun. More obviously productive and emotionally gratifying. So this contrast, this fuzzy compartmentalization of work and life balance, it confuses me. I exercise my heart every day at work, but I have only more work to look forward to. My work life offers no resource for grand respite or repose.
I suppose I have exchanged the rewards of flexibility and honest pleasure from my work for more standard benefits of a big paycheck. I have chosen a kind of respite and repose without grandiosity. I wonder, can I rent a metaphorical room to the luxury of impulse often enough to keep up the dance?