The Guilt of Free Time

Catching up with a group of friends the other day made me realize something that shows how deeply embedded “love of work” is in our culture. We don’t even have to love our particular job, but we all know that work is #1.

When people ask you “How are you doing?” or “How have you been?” or “How is everything going?” it’s a work-related question.

They don’t have to mention work at all. Usually they don’t. But it’s right there in the question. It happens when catching up with both friends and family. These people know you, they have more context for your personality and they understand your whole background, so the year-to-year changes in your answer are less important. But these questions are also some of the most common conversation-starters when we meet strangers.

Second to your name, “What do you do?” is the most pressing question on people’s minds. Your job becomes the most important factor in shaping your identity to people around you.

As someone who has never considered myself a writer, this is a difficult question to answer succinctly. I end up launching into lots of tangential explanations about neoliberalism and hegemony and Medium.com just to rationalize that my time is well-spent, because calling myself a “writer” feels at once incomplete and insincere. But as I elaborate to prove to both of us that I have a “real job”, I notice I’m not talking about the things I’ve enjoyed more than my “work” over the past months. Small talk doesn’t open the door for talking about the road trips or beach days or delicious meals I’ve had. I have stories that are so much more exciting than what I do for work and I’m much more interested in learning things about other people outside of what they do for work. Yet the first thing we talk about is our job. As the saying goes, “When people ask you what you do for work, they’re calculating how much respect to give you.” Suddenly, I feel guilty for “slacking off” so much.

I do love my job. And I loved my last job, too. I was fortunate to work alongside great people at a fun company with an interesting product and exciting clients, but I don’t miss the corporate work schedule one bit. I enjoy what I do now, and a major reason I chose to shift to full-time freelance work was to break from the “traditional” work window from 8am to 5pm. Now I spend the majority of my days doing various non-work-related activities, then I start my writing when most people are just logging off for the day.

I love slow mornings, drinking coffee, reading news and nonfiction, cooking a late breakfast, walking and thinking, napping with my dog or playing casual soccer in the middle of the day, sprawling out in the sun, listening to good music, cooking a late lunch and having another few cups of coffee for dessert. I like watching stand-up comedy and listening to good music. Laughing helps us live longer, dancing is dang good cardio, and talented artists challenge the brain and stimulate growth in ways that work can’t. It’s non-traditional learning.

Then I write when the sun goes down. I don’t mind being inside then. I don’t need to synchronize my schedule with anyone else anymore. I can burn the oil as late as I like, then sleep in a bit the next day if I need to.

Writing is certainly important to my identity, but everything else I do in my leisure time is what defines me as a person.

The fact that careers are the most important indicator of a person’s status is a sinister side effect of neoliberal culture glorifying consumerism. We have to learn what someone does [for work] almost as soon as we meet them, and we have to hear how their career has been going when we catch up with them to judge how well their life has been going.

I don’t regret spending the bulk of my day at leisure during the prime daylight hours. These activities are just as important to my sense of self as my job.

But whenever I’m asked, “how have you been?” or “what are you up to?”, I’ll still talk about work before leisure.

It’s not that people don’t care about the details of my personal life outside of work. Just about everyone, though, would find it weird if the first thing I mention in response to “what’s new with you” is that I watched a great new Bo Burnham special and, while on a hike with Fritz, saw a rafter of 20+ wild turkeys hanging out alongside a bobcat who was harmlessly trying to climb a tree. Their question isn’t “fully answered” until I mention how things have been going at work.

This is neoliberalism so deeply entwined in culture that it’s penetrated my personality and imposes on my conversations with friends in ways I only notice on the drive home.

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