I have a curious perversion of mine to speak about today. I call it lazy
workaholism. What it basically boils down to is I do not like taking days off.
Most people who say this are called workaholics. The definition of a workaholic
(via Wikipedia) is: ‘a
person who is addicted to work.’ That is not true in my case, I certainly like
not working and on the whole, given the choice, would prefer to not work as
opposed to work. Yet my actions are in conflict with this statement. I have
almost three weeks of paid time off sitting waiting to be used and yet the
longest vacation I have taken since starting was two days last July.
It is not like my job is even that important. There are plenty of people
(who are more capable than me) of filling in for me while I take some time off,
but I cannot break away. There are emails to answer, bugs to close, projects to
finish for approaching deadlines. Oracle has no expectation that I never take
time off, but I do. It is as if I fear the consequences of leaving for too
long. That something will break that I am responsible for or that I will grow
slovenly in the time off and dread going back. I like being in the groove,
working everyday, following a pattern. It is breaking the pattern that I dread
most. So I just keep working. Maybe I will want to stop someday.