Work is killing my soul. 

I know, I know—dramatic, right? But I’m being real: the traditional 8-to-5 is a constant source of unhappiness for me, and I’m tired of pretending it’s not.

Quite frankly, it seems like a total scam, this reality of dedicating the next 30 to 40 years of my best daylight hours to making someone else rich. When they hear this, a lot of people tell me that clearly, I need a better job. But that’s missing the point. This isn’t a toxic workplace situation. In fact, my company is pretty cool. And I don’t think I’m just lazy; I like working on things that interest me. But there’s basically nothing—not a single thing—that I like enough to do for a full 40 hours a week.

Nobody Wants to Work

I suppose it’s normal not to like your job. From Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 through Office Space and Blink-182, the running theme that work sucks is baked into modern (especially American) culture. Even more, the pandemic seems to have woken people up to whether it’s all worth it. A 2022 Gallup poll found that 77% of workers worldwide are quiet quitting (or worse, actively disengaged or working at odds with their employers). The leftover 23% who enjoy their occupations would seem like a small minority, but this number actually represents a new high in employee engagement. Gallup’s report points the finger to lack of recognition, high stress levels, and insufficient compensation, positing that improved management practices could resolve these issues. I have to wonder, though: what if the modern conception of work just makes people unhappy?

If you are part of the lucky 23% and like your job, that’s awesome. There’s nothing wrong with gaining fulfillment from an 8-to-5 career, and if you do, I think you should have the option to keep that. But I would really like the option to . . . not.

Misery of Modern Making

How much work is natural? Obviously, we work much less now than people did during the industrial revolution (which, by the way, we owe to the brave participants in the labor movement as well as the rise of collective bargaining). But let’s go a bit further back, before the industrialization of work. It’s no secret that in agrarian times like the middle ages, work was hard, and people often had to work long hours to get everything done—especially during planting and harvest. However, that heavy labor was offset by a lot of time off: two to six months’ worth of various church holidays, local celebrations, and off seasons.

Ok, then. Further back. Surely our hunter-gatherer ancestors had to work around the clock to survive, right? Au contraire: research shows people in hunter-gatherer societies carrying on comfortable lives despite working only about 15 hours per week.

If we take our cue from history, then, it seems like it’s not natural for humans to work the long hours we do now. The lack of time we have to pursue leisure, art, and other elements of the human condition is the exception rather than the rule. But somehow, we’re still stuck slogging away each weekday with no change in sight. Are we in too deep to conceive of anything else?

A Dash of Neurodivergence

Every other year or so, the news is lit up by reports that the 8-hour workday isn’t the bastion of productivity we’ve been told. As knowledge work has become ubiquitous, it’s also become clear that the human brain can’t concentrate for as long as we take for granted. Research is divided on ideal workday length, but the consensus ranges between three and five hours. Ever gotten to the end of your workday and realized you only got a few hours of decent work in? Well, now you can cut yourself some slack, because there’s a reason why.

And imagine: if 8 hours of work is too much for so-called normal people, how much more difficult is the average workday for someone whose brain operates differently from the “norm”? As many as 1 in 5 people are neurodivergent, a term that includes people with ADHD as well as those on the autism spectrum. ADHDers have difficulty with executive function, especially concentrating on repetitive or uninteresting tasks. In order to produce what neurotypical people consider a baseline effort, neurodivergents must expend extra mental energy. Not surprisingly, the rate of burnout is high in those with autism or ADHD. Now recognized by the World Health Organization as a legitimate issue, burnout works on the body like chronic stress and can precipitate serious health implications such as heart disease and high blood pressure.

Who has two thumbs and lives in a constant burnout cycle? That’s right, it’s me! At the end of each day, I’m exhausted, and I never feel like I have enough time for the things I’m passionate about. You guessed it: I strongly believe I have ADHD. And work—in the full-time, traditional sense—is threatening my mental health.

A Flaming Merry-Go-Round of Burnout

The problem with being a creative person with an overflowing well of ideas is the conundrum of time. Some people can work a job that buys them food and shelter and then still make progress on their passion projects, but I’m not one of them. And I know I’m not alone. A lot of us feel that there just isn’t enough time to get both goals done, and by necessity, the day job takes precedence. The situation gets worse if—like me—you’re someone who bases their self worth on developing your creative passions. I believe in doing a good job in my professional career, but what I really care about are my hobbies.

The cycle goes like this: I get an idea related to one of my (many) hobbies. I’m excited, I have a project plan. I know I can do it; this time, I’ll succeed. I was raised on the concept that if I want something badly enough, I’ll make time for it, that anyone can make it if they just work hard enough. It’s hard not to believe this idea, woven as it is into the very fabric of American society. Intellectually, I know this attitude is not sustainable, but time and time again, I dive in headfirst. And time and time again, I go through the tunnel of good intentions to find exhaustion on the other side.

Overnight, all productivity stops. No chores, no creative outlets. I do my job because, well, money is important. But by the end of the day, I’m wrung out from the constant bargaining and fighting with myself to just do one little task. What am I doing wasting my life working for other people? And how can I get anything done, when my projects feel doomed from the start? When the burnouts hit, it’s hard not to feel bitter. Life seems like a feast of creativity, stretching endlessly before me, so promising but unconquerable in my meager free time. 

So, what gives? Well, it’ll have to be the job.