Long but I need to talk this out.
I’ve always been a hard worker. I’ve been working since I was 15 years old. I made my mom take me to go get a workers permit the day I turned 15 and started at a little pizza place. By the time I was 17 I had two jobs. We didn’t have much growing up so I wanted to work. It became important to me at an unhealthy level. I always took work weirdly serious. Even when I was a dancer for about a year when I was 19 – I took THAT seriously! Missing a day as an exotic dancer would make me feel like a failure. I mean if there was ever someone who needs to chill the fuck out it’s me.
I think you get the overall vibe of my personality. I’m a little bit high strung and no matter what the work is I’m doing it as best as I can. I’m in my 30s so maybe it’s a generational thing but I feel like I’m trapped in that generation that was surrounded by hustle, grind, work hard – money money MONEY – work is EVERYTHING – work is your personality.
Well I did work hard – I really did. I’m a software developer now and I make money that as a kid or even that dancer I referred to couldn’t have ever imagined and yeah I’m super proud of myself and I actually like my job. I took a year off when I was pregnant and I didn’t think I would find something I like but I did so here I am back working. So let’s get to the problem finally. Last week I busted my ass on this project I’m the lead on, and I got a lot done – like an unhealthy amount done. For reference my daughter turned six months old today so I’m a new mom as well. Today rolls around, it’s Monday and I just don’t have the work ethic in me today. I completely drained myself last week and I’m just burnt out. I know it’s my own fault for going so hard last week but now today I’m just still burnt out, what can you do?
The problem is that I feel so guilty for doing nothing today and I know that’s ridiculous. I’m strongly antiwork in my values due to my unhealthy relationship with it. I actually don’t think that work is even healthy for us anything much over 20 to 30 hours a week…so why am I sitting here on the day that I can’t produce any work and giving myself such a hard time?? Why can’t I get it out of my head that I’m lazy, or doing something wrong? I’m absolutely not! This is how ingrained into our minds that work is always top priority – I can’t even take the downtime I need to recharge without having anxiety about not producing a large amount of work at all times.
I’m fucking exhausted by my own internal expectations and work culture in general. I really hope something changes for my daughter. I can’t raise her to have this unhealthy of a relationship with work. No one is breathing down my neck about anything today but myself.
Any advice on how to take this a little less seriously and reframe my perspective would be great. Thanks for listening.