Working Toward a Solution

I'm obviously an incredible workaholic. That's something that has come out in sessions with Dr. Ian. One of the reasons I came to see him is because I don't have a healthy relationship with free time. I tried living the "life of the mind" when I first graduated college. I worked a small job and tried to spend the chunk of free time I had writing and all those other things. I actually finished an entire collection of short stories--over 20 of them, actually, that need to be edited and reworked. But still, it drove me out of my mind. I also started a business. Sigh. I get jittery with time off, and I feel like I should be doing other things, something more productive with my time than sitting around watching old 1930s movies at 9:00 in the morning. I should be reading the Iliad or something. Even if I've read it before. Go get Sophocles or read the Shakespeare plays I haven't yet read. Or clean up the damned library.

I have exactly three weeks of class left and one week of "finals", which for me just means turning in my own stuff and grading my students' work. After that, no more grad school. Yippy Skippy. My fear is that after a month or two, I'll have crammed all that new time with other projects. It's my habit. I don't know how to just "be" and it feels foreign to me anyway. Now for the couch-psych talk.

The primary reason I work so hard is because validation from work is really the only kind of validation I credit. And the reason it's the only kind of validation I credit is because it was my father's primary judging mechanism for the worth of a person, and I valued him more than any other person on earth. Somebody who worked hard--who tried, no matter what--was a valuable person to him. Likewise to me. And like him, it really didn't matter whether you succeeded; the value was in the effort. He also taught me how to work. He showed me the right way to do things--how to hold equipment, for instance. I remember he used to bring home what he called "secretary work" every now and then for which he'd pay me. I don't even remember what it was, something about sorting papers based on some numbers at the top, but god I loved to do that work. I felt like I was part of the adult world. He taught me how to drive. He taught me all the technical details and he taught me the intangible ones, like diligence and perseverance. If he told you that you'd done a good job, you knew he meant it in every possible sense. I was never prouder than when he said, "I'm proud of you."

Of course I don't have that any more and I haven't had it for a very long time. And though I've had other people tell me they were proud of me (not many, by the way), it doesn't have the same feel to it. My family rarely says it to me, except for my sister, and well, she's my little sister. Our religion rarely endorsed being proud of somebody because A) it was a sin and B) you were never doing enough for Jehovah any way, so what was there to be proud of? Unless you stood up for your beliefs under great adversity. Then you were a hero. Eyeroll. I've had accomplishment after accomplishment, and they just don't do anything for me. I just don't feel anything when I get them. No sense of pride or elation. I feel the same as I did five minutes before I knew I was getting something. I'd like to change that.

But I don't really know how. I like working. The problem is I have a skewed sense of how much work is too much. Dr. Ian and I had a giant debate on the subject last session--he's getting more feisty in our sessions. I'm up for a job this fall that's essentially full time. Maybe about five hours short of full time, but close to that. I'm wanting to keep my other job on top of that, because it's really not any different than the teaching hours I'm working now. In fact, compared to the schedule I'm on this semester, it's actually less work than I'm doing now. He is suggesting I need only the one job. To me, that seems like a big reduction in hours, and I'm scared I'll just cram it full of something else. Might as well get paid for it, if I'm going to do that. So the argument developed to the point where my "homework" is to list all of the bad things that could happen if I only take this upcoming job and don't do both. I think I see where he's going with it, and I hate it when he has a point. I calculated what my average work week looks like right now, including teaching, grad school and my nonprofit job. I'm working 65-70 hours a week. Holy Shitsky. Once grad school is gone, that work week looks like 52 hours a week. You can see how that looks like a big bonus to me, and I can (begrudgingly) see why Dr. Ian thinks that's still too much.

I also have to figure out how to get my sense of validation without pursuing inhuman projects all the time. I don't know how to feel more "empowered" by what I do. I need my daddy to tell me he's proud of me. I've at least figured out that it's a mentor thing. When my favorite prof was in town lecturing, we went out to breakfast (she requested me!); when I explained my project to her, she beamed and said, "Virgil, I'm so proud of you." It was the exact same feeling. So it must have something to do with mentorship. I get a slight charge out of being the mentor and getting to be the one who says "I'm proud of you." When some of my individual students do something fantastic, especially if it's above and beyond their normal lazy selves, I get a good feeling out of telling them how proud I am of them. And they seem to really get genuine benefit from it. That feels good. Not as good, but good.

So I have to figure out what to do with my time if I scale back to working normal people's hours. What the hell do I do that's not "work"? How do I figure out how to have meaningful validation without working myself into a fit? That's your homework. Suggestions, please!

-- Virgil