Diary of a Workaholic

Hello my name is {insert name here} and I’m a Workaholic

It has been four months, two weeks and three days since my last 1am email.

But, as of late, I am trying to develop a normal pattern to my life and it is a lot harder than I expected.

You see my story started like many others, a clerk… a bit low on the food chain but eager to please. And that’s how it was for many Gen Xers. The perfect time to be a newbie in the workforce, you see, the baby boomers had devised a cunning plan, they called it “delegation”. And it started out innocent enough, one or two nights working until 9.30pm getting something out that could have been done in work hours had there been better planning. You are in your early 20s and not really ‘one to complain’ after all, your pay sucks and its not like you can afford to have a life or commitments.

Then as your skillset improved, “delegation” looked more like “doing the job your boss should be doing because he is qualified and you’re not”. So, you’re there until 7pm each evening as the partners have drinks in the boardroom while you finish their work. These guys were obviously in no rush to go home to their wives or children and happy getting mildly drunk. By now you are in your late 20s/early 30s, whether single or married you're still too busy to have kids.

By late 30s you enter the 24/7 digital age. Smart phones mean you can receive emails and texts from your boss (even at 3am because they’re currently in Greece). You’d love to go on holiday, but while paid moderately well for your position, are unlikely to be able to afford to go to Darwin, let alone the Mediterranean. You get to re-live their fun when the obligatory holiday snaps come out, but its the image of your boss in budgie smugglers that makes you wish you didn't have photographic memory – yeah! As for your life (if you call it that), you may have bought a house, but you are never there because you are so busy putting out fires at work. The clients call you directly (including weekends) because they have figured out your boss is a bit of an idiot and prefer to speak to you.

Before you know it, you are in your early to mid 40s, all this experience has made you ridiculously smart and you’ve somehow managed to claw yourself up the ladder with your tenacity (and without sleeping with anyone). Hopefully your marriage (if you ever got married - even for a short time) is still in one piece, your mortgage is much bigger due to all the renovations/extensions and, if not too late, you have anywhere between 1 – 4 kids while you study your degree online (not free for us). Thank god you are at least on a decent wicket (well you can at least afford the odd coffee after everything). You eat your lunch at your desk.

As you move further up the food chain, you find out flexibility is just a term that upper management uses when it suits them, you are expected to handle an overseas client/vendor at 8pm at night, but still work core hours (for appearances sake). Unfortunately, we are getting to an age where one of our parents will likely die and when you want time off, management's concern extends only to “what type of leave are you going to use for that”, and “are you still going to meet that deadline”… making it quite apparent all that extra work you put in doesn’t mean anything and they wouldn’t know emotional intelligence if it hit them in a face with a cat called Mr Sprinkles.

Then if you are really lucky, circumstances dictate you have a break in your life. It could be ill-health, it could be redundancy, it could be “in-between contracts”... or a complete mental breakdown... I mean, its not like it wasn't coming. A moment in your life when you are forced to pause, take stock and think about what is important to you…

…but you cannot rest. By now you are so hard-wired, you end up writing LinkedIn articles, doing consulting for free, working for charities, anything…because you haven’t had a break for eight years (even to have a couple of kids) and you just don’t know how. Its uncomfortable and horrible place, this is what hell must look like.

Now its 2016, your life was such a blur you think 1990 was only a decade ago; and the generation that made you the "good little worker" you are, starts to contemplate their golden years and aim for retirement…and…here we are…Gen X, wired, driven… passing on these very same traits to the next generation.

And at what cost?

So, you may be carrying a little extra weight, have onset diabetes, gout or had a heart scare last month. When you get diagnosed with a type of cancer, you try and think of the positives, such as “at least I’ll get some rest”, but really, you worry about your job almost as much as you are of dying.

Your kids, my god, they got so big so quick. You regret you stopped reading to them at night, but you were often so tired. Okay, you never went along to a Sports Day, why do they have those things during work hours anyway? And I’m sure they don’t mind you can’t always make dinner. Your partner is quite capable.

Is this your second or third marriage now? External (non-work) relationships are awkward. Even when you are home, you are thinking about work, your partner can't "talk shop" so you find their conversation a little innate. Probably why that colleague at work is starting to look attractive because you speak the same language. And lets face it, you spend more time with them than you do your partner. Probably why many other colleagues marry "in-house", but you start to see a pattern as they have been married way more times than you... maybe its not such a good idea. So you don't have to fain interest in non-work related conversation at dinner, you always eat together watching TV, as you scan your phone for any new emails.

Well you can’t blame all this on work, surely. I love working. My current boss says that “I’m driven”. I’d be lost without it. Sometimes it’s the only good thing going on in my life, so of course I’m going to give it my full attention.

It just concerns me that I don’t know what to do without it. I know I can’t work forever. Even if I have someone waiting for me at the end of it all…will I even know how to enjoy it?

Am I a monster of my own creation, or the years of expectations put on me? The unwritten code for those that want to succeed in life you work the ridiculous. Yes, impress your boss by sending emails late at night (because you are obviously still working), in the end none of that matters. You will leave eventually…you will simply be replaced with another.

People may mourn you for a short while, but unless truly remarkable…(and no one really is), you will soon be forgotten. At best, you'll be a standing joke around the photocopier.

You see, everyone will eventually forget what you have done, but it is hard to forget how you made someone feel. And for this very reason, your secretary may not reminisce about you, but your son will spend his adult years in therapy trying to understand you.

At least you had impact on one person.. your lawyer… well, you did pay for his pool house after all.

And of you… well, what is left of you… what of it?

I hope it was worth it.