What are you trying to prove?

That's the phrase that went through my head suddenly, last night, as I was putting the finishing touches on a proof-of-concept page for a web client. This was after a full day at my regular job, editing and posting a 50-minute podcast, taking my daughter out to ice cream to celebrate her 17th birthday...and I remembered the article I'd read earlier in the day, about the cult of overwork. I like to think of myself as a recovering workaholic; I pretty much drove myself into the ground, along with my business, in the eight years I freelanced full-time. When I took this new job, it seemed to be a step towards sanity, towards a more balanced work/life ratio.

Last night I realized that the workaholism is simply subsuming itself into things like self-improvement efforts (C'mon, you can learn Japanese! Why aren't you listening to the news while you do your workout? Shouldn't you be able to play ragtime guitar by now?) and higher and higher standards for my hobbies, podcasting and performing.

Which is why, suddenly, I asked myself last night, "What are you trying to prove?" It's not a light, rhetorical question. It's a real one: why am I doing all of this? Is it my life's work? Is it what I think I should be doing, or is it what I want to be doing? Is it, to borrow from Thomas Moore's canon, feeding my soul?

It may be. Some of it. But to be honest, when I asked myself, the answer I got was "I'm not lazy."

That's it? That's what I'm trying to prove with all this?

Hmmm. Seems like a re-organization of goals would be a good idea.

"How many days pass where we go to sleep exhausted, after a day packed with work - work unrelated to our goals? That’s sad, isn’t it?"

--"Work for Yourself First"

Even though the article does posit that getting up an hour earlier might be a good idea, which I'm loathe to do (I've already done it twice, and am swiftly reaching the point of diminishing returns), there's a lot in it that makes sense. Especially the focus on persistence, rather than quick fixes.  I think of it as "inching towards daylight", a phrase from Blade of Tyshalle, a fantasy book by Matthew Stover. It feeds my "accomplish the mission at all costs" mentality left over from the USMC, but in a more healthy way (more of a "don't give up" rather than "annihilate the opposition with overwhelming firepower").