Reflections on Stress and Long Hours on Wall Street

[SheilaT]

5. People who have no life of any kind outside of their job

are in a very sorry place. It doesn't matter what field they work in.

Certain professions are worse than others. The legal profession, for instance. A new lawyer is expected to spend essentially all of his or her waking hours doing legal work. There is absolutely no acknowledgement that life outside of law might possibly exist.

I'm lucky in that very man years ago, in the mid 1970's, I came to understand that I was a person outside of my job. And keep in mind, I didn't have the kind of professional occupation that can totally subsume a person. I was, at the time, an airline ticket agent, but I totally identified with my job. Then, in early 1976, I became a docent at the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian. A totally cool thing to do, I hasten to add. And what I learned sent me straight back to school. Along the way I came to understand that I was not my job. I was a person who did a particular job. I also had various interests that helped shaped me.

Too many people, in my opinion, totally identify with their job. They are what they do for a living. They are nothing outside of that. It's a real shame.

We see the outcome of that when people retire and die soon after, because they have nothing outside of the job that they do.

Me? I actually am retired. I read books. I've always been a reader. I also volunteer at the local homeless shelter. I have friends, and I do various things with them. I'm also writing science fiction, and have known to be published on occasion.

I am not my job. I am a person, who has done various jobs in my lifetime. But I'm still myself.

I just wish others were more like me in that respect.