as a general rule, i don’t talk about work
here beyond confirming the fact that i am working. the reason for this is because
talking about work is boring, yet i don’t have much else to talk about right
now. it’s been nothing but work nonstop, which is not meant to sound like a
complaint. in fact, i’ll confess that work for me has been gangbusters lately. (and
now that i’ve committed these words to the unforgiving internet, the great hand
of a telecom satellite will reach down from outer space to smite me.)
to start, there is the simple fact that i’m
gainfully employed by a day job i don’t hate and a boss i really love, which
i’m eternally grateful for in this age where people are hurting for work. then
there are the many freelance projects i’ve been commissioned to complete, which
include two magazines (i’ll discuss those in a future post) and work for my
other standing clients such as UCLA and Cedars-Sinai.
i also am working on a couple of book
projects, one of my own making (also to be discussed in a future post) and
another by a client who just hired me to edit his self-help book. so yes, it’s
raining work, hallelujah. thanks be to god, allah, buddha, moses, gandhi, bob
marley and the dali laima. good looking out, guys.
what’s troubling me about all this abundance
is how it’s affecting my free time, which is clearly in short supply, though
that’s not even the issue. the issue is that the free time i do have i don’t
seem to want anymore. what is that about?
i can see it happening a little more every
day — this metamorphosis into a workaholic. like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly,
i’m witnessing myself change, with scales popping up where there was once skin and
my antennae growing longer each week, more attuned now to finding work as
though it were food.
in a sense it is food, as i have plenty of bills to pay and will have more once my
roommate moves out at the end of the month and construction on the deck begins.
so the paychecks will find a new home lining every pocket except my own. i also
made a resolution to cut my construction debt in half by the end of the year and,
at the six-month mark, i’m on track with that goal.
so money is part of it but not the whole
part as i can probably work less and still get by. it’s just that i can’t stop
working, even when it’s OK to stop, like at night when it’s time to sleep and
not check your iphone constantly and without cause. i also probably don’t need
to live in front of my computer the way i do, with email, facebook and dropbox
windows always open. i could probably give myself a break here and there, maybe
take a walk around the block, but it never happens.
when i do leave the house for an event or a
meal with friends, i feel anxious to get home and am too often overcome with the
desire to reach for my phone. in an effort to force myself to “relax goddamnit”
(my latest mantra), i got a massage a few weeks ago but could barely enjoy it.
the masseuse seemed to be taking too long, way longer than the 60 minutes we
had scheduled, i was sure of it.
i also feel like i talk too fast nowadays
and in a way that’s all business. conversations with me need to have a point,
particularly an endpoint so i can hang up and return to my work. i have trouble
sleeping through the night, my mind jumpy with my to do list, which i keep in a
running email i send to myself daily, resending as new items are added and completed
items are removed.
the bright side of all this effort is that
my shit is getting done on time. deadlines are met, results are delivered. i am
an efficiency machine. it’s the type of busy where there won’t be time later so
it must get done now. and i get it done and redone and overdone and superdone.
and then i do some more.
and when there’s nothing left to do, i drive
myself crazy with thoughts about how i could have done it better. but here’s
the kicker: those thoughts don’t center on my work as much as they do on the
rest of my life. it’s mostly memory-lane stuff , involving the people, places
and things of my past. i’ll fixate on my (perceived) missteps, telling myself i
should have stayed in San Francisco
after college instead of moving back to LA. i’ll wonder why i didn’t trust my
gut when it told me that last guy was not a keeper. i’ll beat myself up for
working for others instead of working on my own writing.
maybe that’s why work feels so welcome
lately: it’s the one place where i feel competent. even when i do make a
mistake there, i never obsess over it. i simply shake it off and keep moving
forward. it’s the same approach i’ve taken with everything in my life, i
suppose. yet i’ll ruminate on my life’s mistakes — endlessly, needlessly,
constantly — long after the time to change anything has passed.
of course, i know no one gets to play a
perfect game, that we all make mistakes and learn from them, grow stronger and
become who we are today, blah, blah, blah. i know this shit. and that’s what’s
troubling: i should know better. still, there’s no off switch, nothing to shut
out this internal melodrama and self-obsession that’s making me feel like a
teenager. work is my only reprieve.
of course, there are worse addictions to
have, some i’ve likely had before, including an addiction to nicotine. and
while it’s easy to think that my love for work is just the latest manifestation
of an addictive personality, i know this isn’t the case with my personality
because if it were, i would have gotten addicted to every drug i tried in
college, of which there were many. but none really stuck besides cigarettes (at
least not for the long term).
and that’s my hope here — that all of this
will be short-lived. my birthday is fast approaching, bringing the
coulda-shoulda-woulda blues with it as it has in years past. i don’t doubt that
this has been playing a big part in the mental mind-fuck i’ve been giving
myself. but my birthday will soon pass along with the rest of 2012, which will
be characterized as the year of “the crazy to do list” for me. and when it’s done, i hope
i can look back on the great projects i completed fondly while no doubt struggling with some new preoccupation.
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