I’m more than a bit dismayed that I still wallow in work worry.
At 60 years old, I thought that shit would have dissipated by now, but it hasn’t.
I still lie awake at night and stress out about work.
And lately, worry is partnered (weirdly enough) with a growing and sustained apathy, where even though I’m frenzied and panicked about my job, I struggle to find the motivation needed to push through the mile-high mountain of inane yet necessary Zoom meetings, team stand-ups, One-on-ones with my managers, deliverable deadlines, and new processes, procedures, and tools.
You know you’ve reached a saturation point when you can’t summon the energy needed to organize your thoughts and quell your work worry.
And I’m beginning to think that’s where I am – at the intersection of panic and apathy.
If I never hear another “let’s jump on a call” or “find some time on my calendar,” I’ll be OK because honestly, after 35 years, work has become an exhaustingly joyless and life-draining endeavor – a toxic and twisted nest of feigned interest and stress made worse by the fact that our daily lives are unfolding against a devastatingly bleak backdrop of worldwide calamity; from our crumbling democracy to the rise of authoritarianism to the climate catastrophe, humanity is in shambles – making it damn-near impossible to focus on two-week Agile sprints and software deliverable deadlines.
At least, for me, it does.
And so, I’m itchy to retire. I want to step off the “dread mill,” put my work worry aside, and use the surplus of time and onset of calm to focus on things that matter – family, personal relationships, health and relaxation, and preparing for the apocalypse.
And actually, it’s beginning to feel like retirement might be close at hand — I mean, after 35 years, the next step, the one where my wife and I get to relax and smell the roses, should be just around the corner.
Right?
I consider myself one of the lucky ones. Barring a catastrophic financial meltdown, I hope to retire while I still have some tread on my soul. But for millions of Americans, the high cost of healthcare, housing, food, gas (and just about everything else) makes retirement a pipe dream.
If I had to continue the rest of my days writing bland and drier-than-dessert-dirt descriptions of software features, I don’t know what I’d do.
I did it for 35 years.
I’m ready to stop.
To keep at it when I no longer care would damage my emotional well-being.
Humans are strange; we keep doing what we do, even when we’re dead tired, exhausted, and deflated by it. Even when it brings us no joy and turns us into stressed-out, fidgety, and fragile work zombies, we keep on with it. Maybe because we have to. Maybe because we have no choice – we work or get swallowed up and spit out.
And fear prevents us from stopping (even for a minute), stepping back, and considering another path.
The system that we’re part of has turned millions of Americans into robots. Programmed and cultivated by the carrot-and-stick, the pot-of-gold-at-the-end-of-the-rainbow message of capitalism.
And so, we move ahead, expressionless, one foot in front of the other, until that final day when we stop and fall over into our shiny and perfectly polished coffins.
That’s no way to live, and not a good way to die either.
bendingtheneedle 