Confessions of a Workaholic
Ralph Milton
January 1, 1981
I didn't know I was a workaholic. That surprises me because I easily spotted plenty of other victims. I even scolded a few of them for carrying their identities in a briefcase. Then I found myself taking the cure. Cold turkey! And only when I felt the withdrawal symptoms did I recognize the disease and realize what was happening. I had resigned from my job as a television producer and moved from Calgary to Winfield in the Okanagan Valley. My wife Bev had accepted a call to be the minister here. I had always wanted to write, and this seemed like an ideal opportunity. Suddenly I didn't have an official title or a position or an office to go to, and I didn't have a pay check at the end of every month. I felt odd at first, then painful. As I hammered and dug to get the house and garden in shape, the age-old question behind all questions kept coming back to me: Who am I? What am I? Pounding away at a two-by-four one day, I remembered some feelings from years before, an event of some sort in New York where I was working. We were asked to say who we were without reference to our jobs. I couldn't do it. A few weeks earlier, a friend down the hall from my office had been given his walking papers. I wondered who he was now-just an unemployed executive? And who would I be if that happened to me? I hurried back to my office. That always helped. Whenever I started getting upset, I'd open my heavy brown briefcase, take out two antacid tablets, and get to work. That should have been a clue. It's a classic symptom of workaholism-using your job to escape the reality of life. Another classic symptom is to have your identity so tied up with your job that you have no meaning unless you're working. "Workaholism" isn't even a word in the sense that it ...
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