Is Your Weird Work Schedule a Sign You’re Doing This All Wrong … or Are You Doing It Absolutely Right?
A 9-to-5, 40-hour workweek doesn’t work for everyone. But we all still have limits.
Sometimes, after dinner, I go back to work. And if you think about it — I mean REALLY think about it — this isn’t all that surprising considering how many years I spent doing this very thing when my primary “job” was getting a degree.
The last paper I wrote to earn my master’s degree was due at 11:59 pm Eastern on a Tuesday. It had a 15-page minimum requirement. I wrote the entire thing in about four hours and submitted it two minutes after the deadline. But I passed.
Not only did no one question this — degrees get jobs! or so they claim — but by the age of 25, two straight decades of increasingly difficult education had taught me how to work fast, work well … and work late.
In college, I would sometimes end up tiptoeing around my apartment at two in the morning trying not to wake up my roommates so I could finish my reading so I could write my discussion posts so I could get the grades I needed to get the internship that would get me a job …
You get the idea.
Also, I DEFINITELY woke my roommates up at two in the morning no matter how hard I tried not to. You can’t NOT smell coffee brewing in a very tiny kitchenette less than 10 feet away from the bedroom door. And I have very loud footsteps, despite being a relatively small human.
But do you know what I CAN do quietly? Type. Which is what I continued to do long after the sun went down, night after night, between getting the last of the degrees that were supposed to magically grant me everything my naive career-driven self could have ever wanted and … 2020.
It’s too soon. 2020 and I aren’t on speaking terms at the moment. It’s fine.
In the years I spent hustling to become … something? Someone? The people I lived with never understood the very carefully arranged structure of my workdays. And by that I mean the concept of working 16+ hours per day seven days a week was all but completely unheard of.
“It’s Saturday! You’re not working, right?”
“It’s after seven! So you’re free.”
“You have a meeting at 9 pm? Isn’t that a little … late?”
Not when you’re me. Not when you’re what I’ve come to call a “vessel for ideas that cannot stop making ideas into things.”
Some call it content creation, but maybe it’s time for a terminology update.
I’ve complained one too many times on Twitter (I really need to get rid of that app) about how much I hate people assuming I’m too busy to help them with things. I actually just hate the concept of “busy” in general.
After graduating with my English degree, in the span of six months I took 15 credit hours, completed a 200-hour externship, restarted my blog, interned for at least 3 different companies, and started freelancing … all so I could graduate with my science degree, apply to grad school, get a full-time job, pay off my student loans, and not feel like a complete failure compared to everyone I graduated with.
I was not busy. I was working harder than I ever had before to earn the things I wanted. The hours were long and sometimes painful (the externship required me to be at the hospital before 5:30 am, which is what we Midwesterners call “why is it still dark out and why are my eyes open?”).
But everything I did was worth it. Except the early mornings, late nights, and weekends where I either constantly disturbed everyone around me or was consistently interrupted by them.
No matter how hard you try to explain to someone outside this industry why The Game must be played this way, it’s just too nonsensical to fully comprehend. For a lot of people, the end of school is the end of the grind. You did it. You got the very expensive piece of paper. Maybe you even framed it. Sure, you have to put in the work to pay off the loans, to afford the house (do Millennials still not get those? Asking for a desperate, claustrophobic friend), to do all the things.
But not for 60 hours per week. Who does that?
Again … I’m pointing at myself. It’s me. And all those like me who, of no ill-intended fault of our parents (hopefully), grew up being told that the harder you threw yourself into your work, the more (and more quickly) it would pay off.
I don’t work 16-hour days anymore. I can’t. I have a baby (she’s covered in fur, three-and-a-half, and eats bird poop, but I am the basic b*tch 20-something stereotype you’re looking for), a partner, a strong desire to finish all the video games my early 20s so graciously robbed me of.
But I’m tempted. Still. Almost daily. I see other people doing work, despite just having worked an extra hour on a side project, and I’m like, “Work! I like work! I want to work more.”
WHY? WHY THOUGH?
When I’m scolded or judged for my wonky schedule, it’s easy to blame it on a number of unfair assumptions. Honestly, there are times I wonder if not having Twitter (seriously, get me off this terrible island) would finally teach me to stop comparing my hustle to the masses.
I would love to tell you that the lack of understanding from my surrounding counterparts has changed the way I look at my own personal work-life balance. But at this point, I’m not sure what will. I am better than I was. But the desire to do more — just in case — is a constant fire inside me.
The truth is, sometimes I still make things for people for free because I genuinely enjoy them, or like the people involved, or both. But there’s a darker reason to the madness: I still haven’t let go of the notion that each extra item on my to-do list might one day transform into a paid opportunity that I won’t get by any other means.
Is it a possibility? Sure. I got paid $0.01/1000 words freelancing for a company of websites that somehow completely by accident led to part of one of my book reviews appearing on the back of a Star Wars book. I doubt I got paid much for that book review, but … A STAR WARS BOOK HAS MY WORDS ON IT.
But the benefits don’t always outweigh the costs. Because I’m pretty sure even though I can still work 12 hours straight on a project without taking more than a few short breaks, I’ve probably done something irreversible to my brain and also I have no idea what an actual vacation is?
Perhaps it’s not that our families don’t understand why we’re working the way we are … but instead that they know we shouldn’t be.
I am a servant of the hustle economy. I was quite literally told by a guidance counselor my freshman year of high school that over-involved students got into better schools. Which may be true to some extent, but tell an anxious, competitive perfectionist a correlation like that and she will literally never be able to relax again for the next 15 years.
What is a vacation? Seriously, someone explain it to me. Slowly. Using very simple terms.
I am not proud of my over-commitments. I do not like talking much about the wide scope of projects I am actively working on at any given time. I have been trained to believe this is normal, that this will serve me well after some indefinite amount of time. That I am doing what’s best for me, and someday, I will be glad.
However, I don’t think the solution is actually to do fewer things. At least, not so much scaling back so suddenly that you find yourself curled up in the middle of your office surrounded by empty planners and calendars and coffee mugs unable to remember your own name …
I could do with one or two fewer commitments, I suppose. But there has to be a compromise, still, between you and those that also occupy your general space. Sometimes work doesn’t happen only between the hours of 9 am and 5 pm. Sometimes things take longer than you expect. Sometimes you’re having fun writing that spur-of-the-moment book review.
Sometimes they think you’re working when you’re really trying to get your Sim a date, let’s be honest.
If I promise to be more careful about the hours I work — for my own sanity as well as well as my companions’ — can I also do work I love outside my day job that sometimes maybe also pays me?
Growth is a process. We are all learning.
I work because work fulfills me. But also because I am maybe a little bit broken, and it’s going to take time for me to figure out how to achieve this whole “balance” thing everyone’s always talking about.
If you’re ever around at 5:30 am, and you’re wondering why I’m awake, don’t worry. I’m not working. I’m getting the dog ready for a walk, and thinking about all the wonderful things my future has to offer.
OK, I might be THINKING about work. But I’m a work in progress. I still have a long way to go.
