relapse!

hello I am a workaholic

I have an old friend who now lives in Germany and loves to tell me how different things are there than they are here. A few years ago, when I expressed discomfort over the self-promotion that comes with any kind of writing, he explained that this is specifically an American problem. Germans, he said, have far more ease with hawking creative work because they’re more comfortable with the idea of a compartmentalized self — no person there expects a professional personality to be a “real” personality like we do here. They also require less of artists and thinkers, outside of the actual work. It’s all more civilized.

My friend is a public intellectual who works for elite European publications. Within his academic circles (circles where I imagine everyone wearing monocles and tweed due to class issues/an eldest-Gen-X-sister impulse to be a dick), a commonly held belief is that Americans lack necessary social boundaries and appropriate formality; that we demand (at our own peril) a go go go artifice of authenticity and connection, even when the situation doesn’t necessitate it. Participation in a culture that requires us to give so much of ourselves (or, alternatively, fake giving so much), he explained, makes us complicit in our own suffering.

“You don’t have to give people everything in order to promote your work. Pull back, do less. They don’t need to know the real you,” he said. “You’ve just been fooled into thinking they do.”

I was living in a cabin in Iceland at the time of this conversation, on a writing retreat. Ambition Monster was little more than Sharpie-scrawled ramblings across a rainbow of Post-Its I’d taped to my twin-room’s wood walls. I could not conceive of marketing a book that didn’t exist or how best to approach it when I did. I was in my favorite place in the creation/work process: Alone with my writing, just trying to get the words right.

Cut to three years later: I wrote a book about overcoming workaholism and the drive to be “good” at any cost and, in the process of promoting it, relapsed into workaholism and the need to be “good” at any cost. I’m laughing as I’m writing this, but in a sad-laugh way. I feel so dumb and so tired, off-tilt and overwhelmed. I can’t believe this happened but — as any pop-Buddhist will tell you, a lesson is repeated until learned — OF COURSE it did.

I had no plan for the promotion of Ambition Monster. No admin support system in place. Instead, I got on the ride earlier this year and let it take me wherever, showing up for everything (just happy to be asked!), putting myself last. Since March, I’ve maintained the roles of book spokesperson/promoter and ancillary emotional essay writer and intimate social media marketer and chief meeting scheduler (“could you give us just one hour you’re free in the next month?”) and travel coordinator and freelance payment-tracker-downer, all the while keeping up weekly episodes of Everything Is Fine and updating this newsletter and holding down my full-time day job and dealing with a health scare (Dense Breast Club™ unite!) and navigating a potential move and raising a spiky child and trying to be a non-loser partner/daughter/sister/friend.

In the last four-six months, while publicly spouting “boundaries around work,” I’ve had zero. I was so invested in the success of Ambition Monster — as some astute interviewers pointed out — I forgot all my hard-earned rules. I’ve worked seven days a week for more weeks than I can remember, fit work into every crack and crevice of my life.

I am in bed with COVID as I type this, forced to slow down the train.

Future installments of this newsletter will explore just how to disentangle yourself from a relationship with work like this, especially when it’s work you love, especially when you’re making commitments to people and things you care about, especially when you struggle with letting other people — and yourself — down.

Success, at what price? Particularly in this country with zero social safety nets, particularly for women. There’s a lot to unpack.

I’m sure I owe you an email. But for now, I’m just going to take my own advice and, for the first time in a long time, rest.