A Case For Workaholism

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Originally uploaded by blinkingline.

Being a workaholic has its advantages.

Always appearing to be busy, you are therefore seen as contributing greatly to something (even if it's contributing in some way to the aesthetic value of dog food packaging).

You have the luxury of burying your soul, the very essence of your being, under loads and loads of ... that's right: work.

You have an instant, ready-made excuse for anything unpleasant that might crop up: "Congratulations on winning the first prize at the International Parakeet Talent Convention. I wish I could make it to the ceremony but I've got a mountain of paperwork to wade through, man." Now, this lame excuse would only work if you were known to be a workaholic. It would never work if your friend knew that you sped home at five sharp every evening to watch reruns of Mork and Mindy.

The same applies to concocting an alibi for a heinous crime like say, murder, for example. "I was in the office writing a contact report at precisely the same time Mrs Pang was being sliced into giant-sized cubes and turned into carrot soup." Again, this would only be plausible if you were known to be an obsessive, compulsive workaholic.

Workaholism is also great because it gives you an identity. It allows you to identify with workaholics all over the world - it's not all that different from alcoholics, druggies, sexaholics and a whole other bunch of holics. When you have such an identity, it carves you your very own space in this mixed-up world. In a world where war, famine and misery are rife, you can push everything aside, stand up tall and proud and declare, "I work, goddammit!!!"

You will never be lost (mostly because you're always in the office), you will never ponder over the purpose of life (it is to write insanely long emails and draft out boring quotations) and you will always know who the most important people in your life are (the ones who dole out your paycheck).

Whenever life spins out of control or goes out of its way to bite you in the ass, you can languish in the comfort of knowing that with work, you will always have consistency. Rest in the knowledge that no matter what happens, it will always suck. You can count on it to always suck. It will rarely get better or worse (hey, when you're scraping the bottom of the barrel, you know it's pretty much a done deal).

Ahhhh ... workaholism is a thing of true beauty. And the best part is, anyone can be a workaholic. Unlike snooty country clubs, it doesn't matter how much money you make, how expensive your set of golf clubs is or how many BMWs you own. It doesn't matter what race, age or gender you are. Workaholism does not discriminate. All you need to earn your way in is the ability to stare at the computer for 12 straight hours without blinking and have an all-consuming (and therefore, unnatural) fervent passion for pie charts.

There. I have made my case for workaholism. Now all that's left for me to do is to actually become a workaholic. So far, I fear that success has eluded me - especially since I just spent the last fifteen minutes blubbering about the virtues of workaholism instead of doing any real ... you know ... work.