Workaholics, relax-o-matics

I've been thinking a lot about work lately. Some would say I have time to think about it because I haven't been doing that much of it. I think it's part of my lifelong process of self-acceptance. Also, living with and loving the people I do, work is like a 7th house mate, a family member, the juicy friend that's great to gossip about around the dinner table.

Some people work a lot because they must in order to make ends meet. Other people genuinely love what they do for a living. Some feel obligated to work because their work is important to the world. But I've found that the people I know, regardless of their motivation for working or whether they take pride in the work itself, take pride in working a lot.

I'm not so sure working more than necessary is a good thing. Everyone seems to have a rebellious viewpoint on at least one generally excepted socio-cultural norm. My friend Ben thinks that lard is good for you, and damn the surgeon general. Several friends think that monogamy is a terrible and oppressive practice. A few disbelieve in the existence of most mental illness. I take issue with the moral value of work, specifically working a lot.

These work-a-lot types aren't the people I'd think they would be. It's not like they're stock brokers, day traders, ER residents, miners. They're union organizers, teachers, bar tenders, students, retail clerks. Alex, as some of you might know, is definitely a work-a-lot type, and he has so far come up with the best (and most damning) explanation of work-a-lots for me. "If everyone else would just work more, just do their share, I wouldn't have to work so hard." He told me this a few years ago, and I was overcome with guilt. I, through my relaxation, was working him to death. I immediately started a student group, joined a board, started volunteering at a shelter and a hospital. By God, I was going to do my part to save the hard working work-a-lot types from perishing for my relaxation sins. Of course, that is the vastly oversimplified version of events. I really did and still do care about the organizations and projects I am involved in.

Nothing changed except for my level of anxiety and self-loathing. I'm bad at being overworked, and for a long time that has been a source of shame for me. I have an irresistable urge to slack when I am overwhelmed, and it's not as pleasant as it sounds. At my breaking point, it happens like this: I lay down to sleep, at last, around 1am. I have nightmares all night, that make me cry out, thrash, and generally disrupt my own and Alex's sleep (recently, my spine was torn out by an alligator). After weeks of sleep that is basically more exhausting than it is restful, I wake up one morning, crack my eyes, and can't get out of bed. My heart is beating so fast I fear that I will have a heart attack. I know, from various failed attempts at athletic training, what my maximum heart rate is, and I know that I must me approaching it as I lay there sweating and panting, exhausted and unable to do the 8 bazillion things I have promised various committees, the homeless, the abused, my family, my friends, myself, that I will do. It goes on like this, until I close my eyes and wait, submit to the panic, and eventually it passes. If I have any sense, I go climb into the guest bed and go back to sleep. If not, I go get started on the 8 bazillion things, but the truth, I've learned from so many repeats of this episode, is that it's all over at this point. My relax-o-matic kicks in. I can't focus enough to get anything done. In my shame, I don't call or email or text anyone to let them know that I'll be dropping out of society for a few days or weeks. I just stop. Recently, I stopped as I have before, but this time I tried something different. I tried not to hate myself for stopping. The nightmares and the heart attacks continued for a while, but over the last few weeks they've been on the decline.

It's hard not to think of my inability to handle overwork as one of my greatest moral failings. There are all kinds of derogatory labels for people like me, but I know they're others out there. Partly because Alex is not one of them, and he complains frequently about people who all of a sudden, after a period of good work, stop returning his calls and emails, miss deadlines without warning, blow off important meetings. He is mystified, but I know. They're me. It doesn't help a lot on my mission of self-love that these people drive Alex crazy, but whether out of unconditional love or out of ignorance of my true relaxing nature, he loves me. I prefer to think it's the latter that gets us through.

One option that I've considered in the past is that other people only pretend to work harder than I find possible, unkindly fibbing me into attempting the unreasonable. Sadly, that theory has been disproved my my current acquaintances. In the interest of their privacy, I won't go into specifics of their schedules, but suffice to say that no one works merely 40 hours a week. Relaxation is a priority for no one. Reading the paper leisurely while drinking a hot cup of coffee, contemplatively staring out the window for a few minutes, browsing dusty corners of the local public library-none of this is penciled into their schedules. Some of them try, sometimes subtly, sometimes cuttingly, to make me feel like a bit of a loser for partaking in these activities. Lately, I refuse. I refuse to feel guilty. Not that I have reached Buddha-like peace with myself on this issue. I'm still just a little jealous of other people's capacity for work, but lately I've been hoping that they are a tad jealous of my capacity for doing nothing.