All this time off has given me a lot of time for, I guess, self-reflection? One of the things I’ve realized is that the workaholic thing isn’t new. I was conceiving of it as a relatively recent problem, but it isn’t. I’ve had an office job for the last five years and been in a position where my office job could spiral out of control.for the last four, but I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember.
Being 25 and being annoyed that I wasn’t permitted to work 37.5 hours in a row. I “only” got to work 27 hours in a row instead.
Being 20 and in my junior year of college. I have had a stress- and drug-related mental breakdown once already. I am heading for my second. I will have three before I graduate with my BA, where I picked three concentrations purely because mostly people only picked one or two.
Being 15 and receiving my high school class rank with weighted average. I am 14th in my grade, out of 714 students. My weighted average is 107. I am intensely ashamed that my best friend at the time was seventh. I reason that really I am competing with my honors track peers, a group of about 60 people, so really, I was 75th percentile -- a C, if you will. I can’t see that maybe between doing a club after school every day, volunteering 15 hours a month at a natural science museum, and my part-time job working 10-20 hours per week, I am stretched a little thin.
Being 10 and getting letter grades for the first time. I notice that I tend to get A minuses. Not As, and almost never A pluses. On the one hand, I basically don’t get anything below an A minus (except in gym, which was an exception to my perfect-at-any-cost motto). On the other hand, the minus bugs me. Minus. Less than. Not as good as. I resolve to work harder to turn my A minuses into As.
I’ve been trying to think of who I was before perfectionism and workaholism took over. I think... I think I was really young.
I don’t know. It’s hard to admit, but I think this is part of who I am right now -- to get rid of it is going to be harder than just reading a book and moving on with my life. It’s really going to involve bringing my life into balance, and it’s going to take time.
