Pavlovian Pendulum
One of many of my favorite scenes from the television show Babylon 5 involves Dr. Franklin. As the stress and pressure builds around the station, the doctor takes to burying himself in work. I remember watching that for the first time as a teenager thinking, How could anyone do that to themselves? Eventually he takes a leave of absence to find the dividing line between himself and his job.
"Walkabout," he called it. The idea the character posited was that you start walking until you find yourself, and then "you sit down and have a long talk." Unfortunately for him, he happened upon a violent mugging, only to have 3 inches of steel pushed through his abdominal wall.
Injured, weak, nearing shock, Dr. Franklin does indeed find himself. It's not a pretty reflection. The mirror-Franklin summed up the character's situation with ruthless eloquance:
You use work to run away from yourself. And you use Stims (stimulant) to run away from your work. And right now -- you're running away from everything.
Thinking about this now, I cannot ignore the parallel.
The simple fact is, I don't like myself. Most days, I can ignore it enough to get some grudging satisfaction out of my existence. Other days, however, I feel as if the remaining grease-spot would be too much of a hinderance.
I also bury myself in work. One of my motivations for buying a blackberry was to use it for work email. I'll make sacrifices for work that most human beings would balk at. I've worked 14 to 16 hour days for weeks on end. I've given up weekends and holidays. I've blew off holidays and sick leave justifying it with this critical project or that.
And yes, I have a problem with stimulants. Soda. Coffee. Energy drinks. Particularly coffee-based energy drinks. All of them are the fuel and lubricant needed to keep the machine of self an efficient wage slave. This abuse has affected my physical and emotional health, and I thought little of it. I came to understand with dreadful clarity what my teenage self could not grasp.
I am not normal.
You might think I'm going to rise up, chuck off the shackles of corporate oppression. The fact is, I actually enjoy pushing myself like this. The worst assignment I had I was pulling 16 hours a day for a week and a half in a hostile environment where I as damn knew threatened with physical harm. It might have been an assignment from hell but I came out not only alive, but successful. I pulled off something some thought impossible.
It felt damn good. And when I finally got home for Thanksgiving the next day, I slept for 23 hours with little interruption. Later I began to see how I enjoyed the abuse. The way I threw myself into the fray with little concern for my wellbeing. In my mind, there wasn't much to lose; apart from work I had no redeeming value. This reminded me of something else:
Take a dog and lock it up in a room by itself. Once a day, you open the door and kick the shit out of it. Eventually, the dog will come to expect the beatings -- need them -- because it's the only interaction it knows.
That also sounds dreadfully familiar.
