I Promise It Will Never Happen Again
My boss had been talking to everyone about numbers: how many sessions we’ve been having, how many people we’ve been seeing, how many people show up or cancel. She noted that my numbers happened to be better than some of my colleagues, but there was a significant dip in August. This was merely an observation, not a criticism, and it was something I was already well aware of. I earnestly assured her that it would never happen again. “After all, my dad is unlikely to die again anytime soon.” My boss blinked once and said, with a chuckle, “Fair enough.”
It raises the point for me that it approaches the absurd that I am even worrying about this. Of course, I worry about most things, generally speaking, so why not this? Yet, even when going through the process of my dad’s dying and burial and everything that goes with those, I was also incredibly anxious about the time I was missing at work. Work-life balance seems to be a complete farce. Don’t get sick, and don’t have any relatives die, and definitely don’t have any friends die. Don’t think about a mental health day and don’t ever, ever take a vacation. Has this message been directly given to me? No, I don’t work for some sort of Silicon Valley startup. The message is given in far more subtle ways: Show up or shut up.
My dad was an incredibly hard worker. He worked more than anyone else I can think of. It served him well, and it certainly allowed us to have many nice things and opportunities and healthcare that I know others did not have. Still, he was always gone. Always at the office. Maybe the office in another state. Maybe in Asia or Europe. When I was about ten years old, an adult at Girl Scouts asked me where my dad lived. “In my house,” I replied, mildly confused. My father was so busy with work that there was an assumption that my mom was a single parent. In some ways, at some times, I guess she was.
In his later years, my dad was proud of what he had accomplished in his career, as he should have been, but he also wished he and my mom had traveled more together. They say that no one on their deathbed wishes they had worked more. This was certainly true for my dad. Work is important and hopefully meaningful, but there has to be more to life.
I suppose a lot of people make work the meaning and purpose of their lives. And without being meaningful, work is a soul-sucking nightmare. I do find my work meaningful, and this particular job is not too demanding of my personal time. Long gone are the days when I was on call for a month straight, 24 hours a day. Work-life balance was nonexistent at that point in my career. While it’s better than it had been, worrying about losing a chunk of a paycheck after also losing my father was adding insult to injury. I know I’m not the only person in such a situation, and a lot of workers in this country have things even worse. No ability whatsoever to take sick time, or to take time to care for family members, and no ability to mourn properly when someone dies. So many people are walking right on the edge of absolute disaster, and yet amazingly, we wonder why mental health is such a struggle in this country.
I think I’m getting old enough that while work is important, I’m not going to give in to the temptation to become obsessive about it. Work will be there. It’s a part of my life, but not my whole life. I’m grateful to have a job. I’m equally grateful for the many aspects of my life outside of work, and my goal is to keep everything in the ideal proportion.