10. Work

Having made the grade on my test of physical endurance, I felt compelled to focus more on my work, since the nine months of training did stretch my dedication to the corporation that employs and pays me. I have long enjoyed the products and culture of the company, often being a cheerleader and one who “drinks the kool-aid” to be a good soldier of the rank and file. The willingness to put in long hours or do extra on the weekend came naturally since the game of global competition ensured that there are the quick and the dead when it comes to the modern market, especially in the technology arena.

Now, with that declaration of my work-ethic, I also enjoy slacking off at work and I burnout frequently. But I like to speak of my undying work ethic to feel like a good American, since we tend to equate work with a person’s value. My own father imbued a strong sense of work for work’s sake in his children, as did his father before him. Work defined a person’s character and worth. A lazy person was “a worthless thing.” Money was fine, but to be known as a hard worker garnered more respect and honor. You’ll notice that I sometimes desire honor over other worldly things, and that is my vanity. However, I’ve noticed that change over the past thirty years in American culture. Money has come to be viewed a measurement of a person’s goodness more so than the work he or she does. This placement of money over character has surely been around forever, but I have observed a change in opinion surrounding these desires just among the people in my circle of life.

Surely by now a clear psychological profile could be pulled from these writings and I’m aware that various notions of my goal-seeking and work-aggrandizing ways may be damaged to various degrees. I know some strange notions of morality hover over me and I have confusion in my own thoughts and words. However, in a place of hard winters and farm life, I believe this culture against sloth took form out of necessity, since lack of preparation and unwillingness to complete tasks could result in disaster. A work-oriented lifestyle made sense until the hard winter problem was solved with forced air furnaces, gas fireplaces, and whole-house humidifiers. The chores of farm life no longer apply to most people because there are few farms left today. Larger factory farms is all that is left, which employ low-paid immigrant labor, and large farm families no longer make sense given the costs of raising children. Those of us that left these millions of defunct small farms found work in cities, as we have since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

Part of the restlessness of myself seems to be an American problem at large, since when I lived in Europe the locals complained that we Americans “did not know how to have lunch.” True enough. Even today, I often eat lunch at my desk, not wanting to waste time on a meal. The sense of business and needing to do something all the time emanated from old values toward work, but modern technology seems to have increased our fear of missing out. In fact, farm people did stop for lunch and took afternoon breaks, and in the evening found time to be still.

Time is money, and we want not only to be successful in money but also experience everything. Most interesting is that in our drive for efficiency in everything, we forget how to relax, to the point that the work itself becomes a hamster wheel that we actually want to spin upon. I have often confused sitting at a computer with being the equivalent of being productive, when most of the time I could shut the laptop and get the same amount of “work” done. Even when not working we rush about “experiencing” everything that we can squeeze into the hours, to feed our senses of touching, tasting, seeing, hearing, and doing. Leisure becomes like work when chasing experiences.

The intangible work that I do with software causes an internal struggle in me since I have nothing to show for my many years of work. Being someone who apparently needs feedback and approval, a sense of honor, this ethereal production of code never felt meaningful. I was urged into the technical fields in order to “make money” so that I could live a “good life.” That pairing of money and goodness did not match the teachings of my youth, particularly in the Church, but the message of what mattered in this worldly life became clear, as perhaps it did to many in the 1980s when greed accelerated as an American virtue. Simultaneously we were taught the fear of retiring poor, as we had to “pack our own parachute” lest we strike the ground at retirement at the terminal velocity for poverty. Greed and fear are twins that grow together.

With the sedentary nature of my work, I missed the physical labor and bloodflow of life. I spent so many years turning to drinking instead of exercise to get my mood lift for the day, which of course is a false lift, since drinking takes you up a ladder to nowhere with the buzz, and at night during sleep you slide down a bit further to a lower point on the ladder for the next day. There had been efforts toward exercise, but nothing sustained until I finally quit drinking and then, as I’ve covered in too much detail, the obsession to exercise replaced drinking. Exercise did give me a proper lift of spirits, however, and allowed me to look past the empty feeling that software and IT work deliver. For a case study on how the IT world feels to me, see the movie Office Space.

Over the years of work I’ve had periods of dedication and burnout, like a cycle of its own. The weekly sprints and quarterly releases of software tend toward frantic states of activity and then in between there are many break-fix troubleshooting days that can extend late into the evenings. Solving little problems keeps work interesting, and in another path of life I might have been an appliance repairman or mechanic and enjoyed that. Much of my work has been in troubleshooting and I’ve developed a knack for finding the source of problems and making corrections. I realize that all work becomes monotonous and can feel soul-crushing if a person allows it to. I had allowed my own soul-crush to happen. Really, I chose that option.

In an earlier post I mentioned that career lived at the bottom of my list of priorities, but at times it hovered near or at the top. Like so many others today, I found my meaning in my work, even my identity, and I reveled in my commitment. Like my one night in jail, I felt superior to my co-workers. Why? Because I was a producer, not a feeder. In fact, I could have been Shylock from The Merchant of Venice as I spoke about co-workers in the same manner:

…a huge feeder,

Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day

More than the wildcat. Drones hive not with me,

Therefore I part with him…

So much for being a team player. I disdained the “worthless” but still enjoyed their praise when I completed a task or showed the way. Interestingly, I enjoyed working with first or second generation immigrants to America most of all because I found them usually hungry to make their mark, which meant working hard, working extra, and going to great lengths to complete their tasks. I judged my fellow extended-stay Americans as less valuable since they often checked out at 5 o’clock and worked a mere 40 hour week. Given this observation, I understood why IT jobs were fleeing to offshore hubs.

Truth be told, I had periods of time where I did little, often after I built up a lot of reputation capital for some fix or solution that earned me a lot of back slaps and attention. In reality, I played the “feeder” when I could because I wanted to pursue my own side projects and goals, including running, biking, and swimming. During my training, I would sneak away from work and cancel dubious meetings in order to exercise.

Upon completion of the Ironman, I threw myself into work again as I could finally back off from training. The product, the glorious product, needed to be better and I would be its champion. As for why it needed to be better, I didn’t care so much about market share or money, I just didn’t like the overall quality and every bug I filed or fixed caused an embolism in my head. When I focused on the product, I became agitated. In fact, the product often irritated me, just like co-workers often irritated me.

In fact, my phone irritated me, the news on the phone irritated me, Facebook irritated me, YouTube comments irritated me, anything Twitter related really irritated me, and even LinkedIn had a similar effect of…irritation.

I was always irritated about something in the online domain. Unless I was exercising or hanging out with my family, I was probably irritated. I felt bothered and bitter much of the time, and it tied directly back to the wonders of software and the internet. Oh, on the exterior I held it together and showed the happy face, the peaceful and calm dude, at your command, delivering that white-glove service.

I realized that I hadn’t been to any AA meetings for quite some time and according to AA, that meant I had been “white knuckling” my sobriety, a term I disliked since I felt that they used it to impress people back into AA. But this term fit my state, I had been gripping things too hard like exercise and goals as my guide for life. Even if I did pray for help, strength, and direction, I usually did so semi-seriously as my limited faith had already slipped. I was still at the point of acceptance of a Higher Power, much further along than the Street Light God, but still occasionally blocked. The great scissors of the Serenity Prayer, for cutting through life’s irritations, I had forgotten.

The restless spirit lived on and the hungry heart gnawed at me.

Approaching and passing four years of sobriety, I knew that I could never go back to drinking because I’d wasted too many years in that morass already. One day I checked on my savings and 401K and realized how much I had saved. My retirement nest egg was incubating nicely.

I realized I had everything. Everything this world has to offer, I had experienced or obtained it, and still the restlessness and wandering mind scanned for something more or new or different. There was literally nothing more in the world that I wanted than what I already had. I had a family, a high-paying job, healthy children, a fine house, two reliable cars, respect from my peers, friends and neighbors that I enjoyed, an excess of energy from exercise, and I had my own health. I lived near my parents and extended family and was able to see them often, to be there in the capacity of a son, nephew, cousin, grandchild whenever needed. Even the volunteer coaching I kinda, sorta enjoyed. Still, I felt unhappy much of the time.

I realized that the my worldview of goal-oriented meritocracy didn’t work in the long run. I had scribbled down a quote from an author named Chris Stefanick since it related to me.

“Life is more than comfort. Life is more than a list of accomplishments and activities. While such a list might help you fill out a college or a job application, it does not fill up your heart.”

The obvious truth became apparent, that I could not find fulfillment in materialism or mindfulness or knowledge or even charity work and volunteering. The journey was leading me to one place, and that was back to where I started, to God. The funny part is that this was my hidden fear, that with all my swagger and anti-God talk for years, that instead of everyone else looking like hypocrites, I was the hypocrite. I had become the cliche, leaning back into faith after trying everything else in life. If only there were a word for that, like a parable or something, for a prodigal that strays and goes wild for years only to return home to his father in supplication and in need of forgiveness.

Around this time I felt the urge to return to church, and I tried a different Evangelical church, but again it just wasn’t right, just as AA was not quite right for me. Then one of my children asked to be baptized Catholic, because we had not baptized them, having been “nones” for their entire lives. We said yes. And it was then that I started to rediscover and realize just how little I actually knew about the Church, despite my many years of growing up in the faith.

I started listening to and reading books from Word on Fire, after a tip from a friend. There was a voice in Bishop Barron that I had never heard nor expected to come from a priest, as I had written off the Church some time ago. But he cut through the AM radio noise and YouTube sowers of discord and the crazy attention seekers to get to the heart of the Christian message, which was the message of “love one another” and the deep underlying intellectual tradition that the foundation of the Catechism had been built upon. I had missed the whole point, or rather, never really took the time to see the point while I was chasing down every goal and “freedom” that I could find.

I immediately quit Facebook to remove that poison from my life. I realized that I had nothing to lose in returning to the faith like a child. And I had nothing to fear, just as Bishop Barron asked in a commentary: “What are you afraid of? What do you have to lose? Does it terrify you to think that you might lose your wealth? Your social status? The affection of others? Your health? Your power or influence? Your reputation and good name? Your life?”

If you’ve read all the prior writings here, you’ll know the answer to all of these at some point or another was “Yes.”

In all my pursuit of knowledge, I had overlooked so many books. In the airport, on a work trip, I picked up a book by Timothy Keller called The Reason for God. When I bought it I looked over my shoulder to make sure no one was watching me, feeling like I had betrayed the “nones.” The young cashier looked at me with disdain and I saw my younger self in his expression. Apparently, I had waited so long to buy a book about God that it had become a counter-cultural punk rock kind of thing to do.

Not long after that I picked up a Catechism of the Catholic Church book from a Barnes and Noble. At that point I realized, I didn’t know jack squat about Catholicism.

So I had a lot of work to do to catch up.