The Lady Doth Protest Too Much...

I have a confession to make: I'm a work-a-holic.

Sure, I like to bitch and moan about how busy I am, but secretly, deep down inside, I like the hell out of it. Now, I'd like to add this important caveat: it's work that I like to do. Or at least most of the time. I've had plenty of mind numbing jobs before that didn't give me anything but a near ulcer. Working for Immigration was one of those jobs. I took between 80-120 calls a day from people who spoke very little English or some nasty American who loved to start every conversation with "My tax dollars pay your salary..." to which my response was, "such as it is." It got so bad there that to get through it I started keeping categories and checking how often the category was met (another habit I have in life--I do it all the time during class). I made up the categories like, I Lost My Worker's Permit and The World Is Going to End!!, or I'm Illegal, I Just Don't Know It Yet, or I Know He's Illegal, But He's Been Here For 10 Years--Can't He Stay Anyway?, or my favorite: What Do You Mean She Can't Just Move Here From Canada?!? I hated that job, but I still made it my own. I still fought with management. I disrupted meetings with my silly notion that workers are supposed to be allowed to ask questions.

But I'm always on the lookout for more work, more jobs to do, work that I like, anyway. I have two jobs right now--composition instructor and nonprofit. It's not unusual for me to be grading papers until 11 p.m. after I've worked all day, or retooling a lesson plan early in the morning. My days are often spent jumping back and forth between jobs, which creates some traffic hazards. This past semester, I was printing out articles at work for my grad papers and seeing potential tutors in my grad office. I probably don't do either job at 100%. But I can't give it up. I recently tried to assess my grad school work (another job in itself) with all the other work that I'm doing. I'm a fairly decent grad student, I think. I've been told by Important Professors that I'm a great thinker; but my writing style is very pragmatic. I get a lot of complaints about my scholarly "voice". I understand completely, because the first thing my "voice" wants to say is "fuck you."

I know that in order to get better, I'm going to have to read yet more boring academic articles and get the phrasing and style down. And rework the papers I've already written into longer pieces for scholarly publication. Yawn. I've no idea where I'm going to find the time to do that. So I thought it was probably time to reassess my workload. I can't quit teaching, because it's part of my tuition remission package. And it's the field I'm going into, so that would be dumb. And yet, I can't give up the nonprofit thing. I'm not done with it yet. I'm responsible for *everything* here. Have you any idea what a rush that is? I've met the most important people in this region. I've unleashed a tirade on a collected group of community leaders about how they undervalued the neighboring county they purportedly wanted to help--boy, that was fun! I'm not done with this community yet.

My secret goal in life was to set myself up to live "the life of the mind" (whatever that means). I could write, travel, do the photography thing, because I would have enough support to not have to worry about working. Well, I tried that right after college. I couldn't do it. I started a business instead. Now, the thing closed after about 2 years, but I broke even in my first year, which normally doesn't happen for most businesses until the 3-5 year mark. I was pretty proud about that. But I just couldn't help myself. I believe now that even if I had a trust fund and could afford to do nothing but live the life of the mind, I'd get bored quickly and start mucking around with something else; it's almost as though my brain is wired to look for the job in something.

Most people have hobbies they do outside of work. Work is my hobby.

It came to my attention in the last couple of weeks that a really pretty building in a neighboring town just might be up for sale, and it might be cheap. The reason(s) it might be cheap is that part of the roof is caved in and some of the walls need replaced. But upstairs was a beautiful apartment in its time running the length of the building. Downstairs used to be a ceramics shop. It still has the kilns. It also used to be a bank, and the bank vault is still in there. My mind is working in overdrive trying to figure out a way to get this building and get it restored. Job 1: Once it was restored, it would probably sell for 2-3 times what I paid for it. Job 2: It's an historic building, so I could get it on the national register and get $$ for keeping it up; this would involve looking up its history, making sure I understood what the rules were for the outside appearance--a whole art history project! Whoo-hoo! Job 3: Once I realized that the downstairs would make a great little jewelry shop or something, my first thought was to rent it out. Then my second thought was, why let another potential job go to waste? I'm sure my tranny hairdresser buddy needs an outlet for her expensive handbags. Why not set it up and run it by appointment only?

I'm already too busy as it is. I probably don't need to be doing this.
Stop me before I kill myself!

-- Virgil: literally working herself into the grave

P.S. Mad Dog, I'm going to preempt you here and ask you not to give me a lecture on how I shouldn't be ashamed of working because of good old psuedo-capitalist boot-strap values, 'kay?