I'm a work-a-holic

I don't know a better way to describe my condition than that.

I had the day off to deal with the dryer issue - see my previous post - and I spent a good chunk of the day working, as though it's somehow so important that I can't stop working even on my day off.  That is the biggest lie I think I've ever told myself and I only realized it tonight as I was, you guessed it working.

Now I have a wonderful sweet child and a wife I could've been spending the day with and I did spend some, we went to the zoo which was great because I love the zoo, but what did I do before and after that? Work.  I worked on something on my day off.  Why?  Why would I work for free?  I don't get it anymore.

I think I need to just figure out a way to stop working that would be the first best step, but I don't know what that would be.  Write before I wrote this blog entry I wrote a kind of angry email to my co-workers about stuff that broke today and how I didn't agree with their fix for it.  Of course I wasn't even there so my opinion is invalid and I shouldn't have even been involved because I was off.

I don't know.

I do this all the time too, Christmas, Thanksgiving, even the week I took off to attend my father's funeral in Arlington I worked from there too.  WHY? I have wasted so much time these last 8 years working when I could be doing something else.  God when I think about it like that I really hate myself because I've not only robbed myself of time, but also my family and if I can say so friends, of which I have very few.

I am just going to have to create a mental work block, and put my foot down - perhaps I can come up with something better than that.  My co-workers seem great at not working after work, some of them seem great at not working while they're at work.  Why can't I just not work when I don't need to be.

I think to begin with I'm going to scrap my maintenance windows - because I'm the only one who has EVER done them. I asked for a dedicated maintenance window about two years ago and I got it, but aside from two instances where I got assistance because I asked for it I don't think anyone of my co-workers have ever setup or even thought to setup maintenance on anything.  So why should I?  That would give my back my 3rd Saturday and Thursday nights.

Who am I kidding though I'm already thinking about work.  All the work I need to do tomorrow and all the work I need to do the next day.  I hate myself.