You are more than just how many hours you work.

[invader_gvim]

HI GUYZ

I spent the last week in a deep depression thinking about where my life was and how it didn't really meet my financial and social expectations of where a woman is supposed to be by the age I am at. So there I was, laying on my couch and ranting to my husband about how much of a disappointment I felt that I was. He had some words for me that really pulled me out of it, and I feel like I have a duty to share it with as many people as possible in case any of you are going through the same thing.

Ahem. Anyway...

You don't exist just to work. You exist to actually experience life and the things it has to offer. Just because you don't make as much money as you feel like you should does not make you a less valuable human being. You aren't lazy, but even if you were it is okay to be lazy. You have all kinds of people putting pressure on you to work harder, try harder, and sometimes it makes sense that you'd explode under the pressure and fail. That doesn't make you a failure.

Picture a person who is great at their job and has money. That is definitely a positive. At the same time that does not automatically make that person a success. What makes them a good or bad person is how they treat the people close to them - their friends. As long as you have those people it doesn't matter if you live under a bridge. You are not a failure.

We humans are social animals and so the relationships we have with the people we love are a way better metric of how we are doing than the amount of dollars we own. All of this time I have thought that I wasted my life on not achieving as much as I humanly could, when really I was wasting it piling stress upon stress onto it.

Its okay to take time and just relax. You are loved, and if you aren't then you need to find people that love you. You need to find meaning in life and the meaning that comes from having a good job and working 80 hours a week is not good. I used to work at a coal mine and I had all kinds of money for someone in my poor area. Let me tell you it wasn't worth it. I wish I could get all those hours of overtime back so I could spend them with my husband, my other friends, and even just my computer writing and programming.

My husband didn't touch on this, but another source of meaning you can tap into is art. This meaning isn't just a for fun thing that you do when you aren't working. DDo not forget that you work to live not live to work. You are not Mr. Meeseeks.



You are a blade of grass in a beautiful field, just growing along with those that are close to you.

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Who in their right mind could disagree? 
Congratulations for beating your crisis!

I'd like to add that any comparison ("A person in my age should have...") is futile anyway: Every life's journey is vastly different, and many crucial aspects aren't under your control. For me, the crucial most important thing is to stay true to my own ideals - which is, in result, not vastly different from what you are saying ("treating close people good").

[TheFrugalGamer]

Thank you so much for sharing this; so many people need to hear it! The drive to "become your work" is just an exploitative attitude that serves someone else other than you, and there are so many other ways to find meaning in your life that can be enriching for you and others. For me, having a kid was what forced me to re-align my priorities, but for others it's an illness, or the loss of a loved one, and I wish it were easier for us to find that before something serious happens. Then again, maybe that's part of growing up; I dunno.

I'd like to add to your point about finding meaning in art: don't worry if it's not "good enough!" Everyone starts somewhere, and your art doesn't have to look like someone else's in order to be worth looking at or making. Sometimes the most important part is the making itself, not the end product.

@ThunderPerfectWitchcraft that's a great point about making comparisons, and the wisdom I've always seen people share as they get older in life is that comparing yourself to others is always bound to bring misery. I think that's why so many people find social media so harmful, because it's primarily geared towards encouraging that comparison with the curated side of other people that they let us see.

[Capybara]

As a workaholic, this was a good read. Your husband is wise.

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

I think that's why so many people find social media so harmful, because it's primarily geared towards encouraging that comparison with the curated side of other people that they let us see.

While this is certainly true, there is also another factor: Because of the problem that the invader also addressed (people not having time for their beloved or to even have relations because they are so interwoven by making their living), many people have much less and less qualitative relations than they should wish for. With industrialization and labor division individualization of the private space (and privatization of the public space!) increases. Many try to use social media to counter this - it promises an easy way to connect to and interact with others, replacing the spaces for interaction that many societies lost or are currently losing in the way of modernization. But the social media aren't about making connections. They are mostly about themself, and they are designed to web you in - and in the end you won't interact with other people, you will interact with the platform.

[Kallistero]

There's a little square to circle this with! You sort of allude to it with art, but the way you're thinking of artistic work falls into a wider superset of purposeful work. You might volunteer with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, a charity organization dedicated to granting a wish for a child in need, or you might be one of the people whose work is depended upon by (maybe even a great number of) others. I've also seen a shining sense of purpose in their work coming from people in specialized academic fields (like mathematics, geology, and astronomy) and artisan fields not always thought of as art (like cooking, fashion, and teaching).

Also, if you work on some sort of team that would fall apart without especially you, it allots a sense of responsibility as long as that team appreciates that you're the one keeping the lights on. This is exacerbated when they fight for you or seek your input when making big decisions. And if you own the business, it's not terribly uncommon to put down a great number of hours to make your project work, because a business that you created is a labor from your own heart & soul.

There are many contexts in which work is fulfilling, and it can come down to how you engage with that work. You are not your work hours, and you deserve to have some rest. However, it's also good to think about what you might do in with your future, what change you would like to see, and how you're going to get there. If you were to indulge in nothing productive for the rest of your life, would that be a fulfilling existence, or rather, would it be as fulfilling an existence as caring for animals or providing families with food or creating ways & places for other people to seek enjoyment in life?

In my town, there was a local concert venue that shut down a couple years ago, because the owner passed away. He was the single pillar keeping the whole thing afloat. That place was his baby, and he worked himself clear through the bone. It made him happy. He gave others a place where they could share their art, where people could enjoy that art and one another's company. But before he had that, he was doing a lot of thankless labor. In the end, his struggles wound up being preparation for what he would spend his last years on, for something that was meaningful to him.

I say that to illustrate how I square work being unfulfilling with work being purposeful:

You are always working toward something that is meaningful to you.

This is often felt acutely by new parents, leaders, and creators alike. You're not likely to find what you seek at your current place of employment. Work can be unfulfilling, thankless, and even dreadful in the moment. However, the lessons & experience you gain from it will often go on to serve you in the future. While I don't strictly mean future employment, it'll help your future self to leverage your past, to build your body of work toward the place where you really want to be. And by that, I don't just mean higher pay; I mean that you'll foster skills, knowledge, and perhaps relationships that'll open the doors to something more fulfilling. You can even tell an employer point-blank that "where you want to be in five years" isn't at that position, but that that position is a step toward your wider goals. Even in those times when it feels like you're not moving, your struggles will always turn into strength. 

The only mistake you can make is never using that strength. Your goal is to reach something meaningful, and if you don't have a clear idea of what exactly that might be, your goal is to find out what that is, to look from different perspectives until you can define the shape of your life's goals. Each person defines the metric by which they judge their worth. It doesn't have to be any one thing, and your metric for your own worth will be different from another person's metric for theirs. A failure to you might be a success to others, and vice-versa. I don't believe it's categorically "not good" to find meaning in work that takes up 80 hours of your week. A charity worker might smack me if I tried to tell them that the hours didn't have meaning! No, you want to judge yourself by your own metrics, and others can judge themselves by theirs.

[invader_gvim]

As a workaholic, this was a good read. Your husband is wise.

OMG You have a room! You are a silly rodent spinning a wheel! Lol thats awesome. You should put a gif like this in.



I showed my husband that you called him wise and he got so embarrassed it was very cute.