And I don’t say that lightly. The words are heavy; the knowledge makes my heart hurt. Though if I give myself a little grace, then the truth is I am a recovering workaholic.
I am a recovering workaholic, and I say those words with the same trepidation and shame that might exist were I to tell you that I had any other kind of addiction.
I looked up the definition just now, even though I’ve been certain of my diagnosis for a couple of years. My online dictionary app describes workaholic as “a person who feels compelled to work excessively.”
Compelled.
That’s a pretty strong word, isn’t it? I can’t be the only one who hears it and immediately thinks of The Exorcist and holy water and a terrified priest. But compelled feels accurate, like something inside of you that won’t take no for an answer, like something you do without conscious thought.
Did I feel compelled to work nonstop?
Without question.
Even now I am typing this workaholic chapter at 5:37 in the morning because waking up to get my word count in at five o’clock is the only way I can actually manage to write books, run a media company, and raise a family at the same time. I still feel compelled to work until I’m exhausted, physically ill, pissed off at the world, or unable to focus my eyes—but at least they don’t all happen at the same time anymore. I feel like I’m gaining on this problem.
Part of the reason I work so much is simple: I love my job. No, I freaking love my job. The people I work with are some of the kindest, coolest, most creative cats you’ll ever meet. Each person on my team had to be vetted, and each role had to go through a couple of people before we got it right. Everyone had to be trained and had to train me right back on how to manage them and be a boss. I’ve spent years building this team. When I walk in and it’s running well, when one person is creating the speaker lineup for our next live event, and someone else is taking the prettiest pictures you’ve ever seen, and the business team is booking new partnerships with some of the biggest brands on the planet, I feel proud. Proud to the very bottom of my toes that I—a high school graduate from the sticks—have put this together. Beyond that, my heart wants to burst because all of these people are working their butts off for my dream.
I had this fluffy, country-mouse idea that we could create a space on the internet that lifts up women from every walk of life, that makes them feel encouraged, that makes them feel like they have friends, that offers them help and advice and does it with positivity at all times. And you know what? It’s totally working!
When I started blogging, only my mom and a few fiercely loyal aunts read the website. Now my digital reach is somewhere in the millions and climbing every day. My online tribe is awesome. I admire them, and on most days I think they admire me too—and I’m proud that I’ve created a business manifestation of my faith in action. Huzzah!
Then I go home.
At home, Sawyer is fighting with Ford over who gets which Lego piece. Jackson has a little attitude he picked up from someone at school, and if he rolls his eyes at me one more time, Lord Jesus, I’m going to rip off both his arms and whack him over the head with them. The baby is teething and fussy, and tomorrow is pajama day at preschool, but I’m going to miss it because I have a business trip. Dave and I are ships in the night, and we haven’t had a date night in weeks—and yesterday I snapped at him over prepackaged lunches and then sobbed all over my pajamas because I felt like such a jerk. And, and, and . . . being a mom is hard work. I struggle with it all the time in a hundred different ways.
But being at work? Oh man, I have that in the bag! I excel at being at work. I am the Babe Ruth of knocking it out of the park in the lifestyle media sector!
So when given the choice between crushing it at the office or barely hanging on at home, I got in the habit of working, working, and working some more. Every time I succeeded in business, I counted it as validation that I was making the right choice.
But wait, folks. There’s more . . .
You didn’t think a major problem like this was caused by only one thing, did you? No way! Nobody’s psychosis is one layer deep. I am a Vidalia onion of issues. I’ve got a cartload of emotional baggage, so let’s unpack some.
I am the baby of four children, and by the time my parents got around to my childhood, their marriage was deeply in trouble. Even though I was the youngest, I was a very self-sufficient child, and I think the combo of those two things meant that I was largely ignored—unless I did something good.
If I got an A on a test . . .
If I scored a goal in the soccer game . . .
If I got a part in the school play . . .
When I succeeded, I got praise and attention; I felt liked and accepted. But the moment the audience stopped clapping, it all went back to the way it was before.
What this taught me as a child—and what I carried into adulthood, as I discovered amid a load of therapy—is the belief that in order to be loved, I felt I needed to produce something.
Fast-forward to me in my thirties, and you’ll see that it’s nearly impossible for me to sit still. I am constantly moving and going and rushing through life. The second I achieve one goal, and I mean the second it’s accomplished, I immediately think, Okay, what next? I struggle to celebrate or enjoy any victory, no matter how big, because I’m always mindful of something bigger I could be doing instead. At work I’m constantly at it. When I get home, I do dishes and organize cabinets and make a list of to-dos that will be impossible to accomplish in this lifetime or the next.
This need to prove my worth, coupled with the fact that I’m good at my career, made me one heck of a workaholic—yet I had no idea that I was one, or that my work was grievously affecting my health and the happiness of my family.
The very first time I had facial paralysis, I was nineteen years old. I was at the tail end of the first long, hard year with Dave, and I knew the end was in sight. Not the end of the year—the end of our relationship altogether. He seemed more and more detached, and the long-distance relationship that we were trying so hard to make work just wouldn’t. I could feel it coming—just like Phil Collins in that one song with the big drum solo—and I started to get anxious. I handled that anxiety the way I’d handled every other kind in my life: I doubled down at work. My already full plate became fuller. I wasn’t even conscious of what I was trying to do; maybe I told myself that if I didn’t stop to think about something bad happening, then it likely wouldn’t.
One morning I woke up and noticed that my left eye was blinking half a second slower than my right. I assumed I was tired from work and wondered if I needed glasses. By the afternoon, my tongue started to tingle and then lost feeling completely. I went to the doctor, worried I might be having a stroke. That was the first time I’d ever heard of Bell’s palsy. A quick Google search informed me that it was a sometimes temporary paralysis that causes damage to the nerves that control the movement of facial muscles. Within days I couldn’t close my left eye, move my mouth, or feel anything on the left side of my face. I don’t know why it’s only one side of the face, but I can tell you, it only adds to the overall charm.
I had to wear an eye patch—which, by the way, is super sexy and basically every nineteen-year-old girl’s dream. Because I couldn’t move my lips, my speech was slurred and hard to understand. When I chewed I had to hold my mouth closed with my fingers for fear that food would fly out and kamikaze to the floor. The nerve damage causes neuralgia, which is also incredibly painful. During that time I felt so sorry for myself.