Confession #8: What About Me?

Becoming a work-o-holic takes a lot of grooming. You first must be stroked into loving superior feedback. Then it must be taken away. Then given back after a small but good job done.

Then you get no attention for days - no one - no one looks at you. breathes your name. tells you you did a good job. No one pets your fragile ego. What About Me?

What happened to me? I am now addicted to knowing that my work is important. I don't need anyone to hold my hand during the job, but I desire the credit. So then, I'm staying after work an hour or so, working on something that could seriously have waited till tomorrow, but your superior really would like it if you could just put forth a little extra effort..... ESPECIALLY because you are required, as a manager, to work at least 30 hrs a week. and you just happen to be getting married in 4 weeks and took on a full time day job and an assistant seasonal manager position (basically another full time job).

So I stay. I work, and work, and get even more pissed when the "Good Job" reward hasn't come. no such thing as "Thanks for staying late! Your work is truly appreciated!" Not even a "Let's go grab a beer. Today was rough." I get into the car alone. I just bust my ass at a crappy desk job from 8-5, then 15 minutes later I'm working a seasonal retail store till 9 or 9:30pm. Forty-five minutes later I get home to my sleeping soon-to-be-husband. I was angry at him this morning. We didn't even get to say goodnight. I only kissed him once today....

I sit in the dark at my computer brooding over my day. Now alone again. No one to tell me that my job was a good one and my work has been appreciated. Two hours later I curl up in bed next to the handsome man in my life and fall asleep for 7 hrs of sleep then a re-do on my day. And when the pay check comes, I still struggle to pay my bills. We just get by while we pay for our masquerade ball wedding reception. It's the only thing I have to look forward to and I don't even have fun while I plan....

My Catch-22

My husband and I are DEFINITELY stuck in a catch-22.... or maybe I'm just stuck. All the money I work hard to make to keep my tiny, pet-less family alive (the two of us) always leaves me without food for a brief moment during the month, or desperate for gas. So I've started picking up some freelance work (here comes my work-o-holic brain!). I am addicted to being busy, so now I have 4 different freelance projects I'm working on at the moment, about to get a new one too.

So hopefully soon I will be making some extra money on the side ..... oh no wait, a lot of these things I'm doing right now are favors. .... wait... 3 of the 4 I'm working on right now are favors. shit. so I won't be making any money, but at least I'm staying busy!

I have other interests than working myself to death. I want to learn to weave. that's right. on a floor loom. with peddles and things. BUT. I don't have an extra $1000 laying around so I can fund my start-up project. Because you and I both know I have so much more time to take on another large project. Well maybe I can work on some surface design, aka screen printing.... or not. Because I have no materials. I have no space. I have nothing to even get me going.

My mom told me when I was young that my work needs to pay for itself. But how are you supposed to start getting money when you have no money to invest in the start-up? So now the two projects I'm longing for, I cannot complete.

No money for start-up, no work to create. No work to make money, no start-up money. Drats. I will have to find myself something else to get addicted to.

What the Crap is a Catch-22?

I never read the book Catch-22 by Joseph Heller when everyone else did in high school so I had to look it up on wikipedia. I still don't know exactly what the book is about but the second line of Wikipedia tells me it is "one of the great literary works of the twentieth century." The more I read the Wikipedia page, the more I feel compelled to read it. Looks like there's some war, some military take over.... That's what I'm into right now! I mean, I'm completely addicted to the Chaos in Egypt so this story that is compared to 1984 and The Trial should be right up my alley.  (tangent: i mean, me? addicted to something that's not work? so weird! :untangent)

So without reading the book, I still have no idea what a Catch-22 is!! If the loud guy at work didn't describe every case he worked on with the words "It's kinda a Catch-22" I wouldn't have even been exposed to the term, or that's as true as I can remember. Since he says it, my manager says it. So I look to Wikipedia again. I finally made the breakthrough where the phrase is explained as a common idiomatic English phrase meaning "a no-win situation" or "a double bind" ... also known as self-contradictory circular logic.