Work-a-holic

Hi I am the Contessa and I am a recovering Workaholic.

I no longer need to attend support for this - truth be told I didn't really in the first place.

I just "got it".

I woke up one day and realized that I lost an entire decade of my life. And I was very sad about that.

It was a very important day for me, but I notice that the more pressure I get in my job, the more hours I put in.

The driving force in my work environment was fear.

I, as many were and are, was fearful that I would lose my job. We were and continue to downsize. I stopped counting how many RIF's I scraped through along with my limping team over the years.

The work increased and the personel decreased. I got to the point where I found myself in the emergency room with chest pains when I was 32 years old. I had worked at the company for 3 years. My eczema was so bad I was on Prednisone to combat it.

My team currently reports to a workaholic who has so much fear that he will lose his job that he takes it out on us. He works, supposeldy, 18 hours a day. I'm not entirely confident in that number because there are way to many day time hours where he is MIA.

Be that as it may, his fear has turned our work environment into a hostile workplace.

It is after midnight on a Saturday. I have just completed 3 hours of work on my vacation. I put in 5 last night. I did it so that my backup isn't looking to commit hary cary by the weeks end. My team has no idea what I do all day. But for the past week, I have put in roughly 3-4 hours in the evening after an 8 hour day, plus 4 hours today and four hours tomorrow just setting up and making sure that the bare basics are accomodated. Basically, I worked a 30 hour week on top of 40 hour week, so I can have 40 hours off next week.

I found that the extra hours of work were really helpful to get my mind off the other situations in my life. Or just the primary one. And I think how easy it would be to use my job as the security to help pull me out of it.

But using the job this way is kind of like taking an oral steroid. All it does is mask the problems so that your body can heal.

Which is a good thing, but not for someone who has workaholic tendancies buried in the fiber of her being. It's a quick slope down hill back into that world. And I am not going back. I WILL NOT.

So while working takes my mind away from the situations that plague me, it is not the firm answer long term. If I allow work to take over my brain so that I don't deal with the pain and grieving and all that crap, I will never get over it. I will just tuck it away somewhere where no one can see it and hope that the light of day doesn't shine on it again.

This is more than just the metaphor in my life as I am taking topical steroids to combat the stress related eczema that has flared up. I refuse to go back on the oral steroids as much as I will refuse to be a workaholic. The stress is both job related and personal life. One or the other wouldn't have done it, both, most definitely.

I am fortunate that I have so many treatments in the house that there is no need to fill more. I was able to start immediately.

As for my work, I will put my orders in tomorrow in the evening and then that is it. I will have done all I can do.

I am ON VACATION.