I don't even know how to start unpacking this, but I just need to vent about it. I am late self-diagnosed audhd afab, gen X who has learnt a lot of unhealthy hustle culture and looking busy brainworms over the years. Been down the burnout path a few times too before I realized my neurotype around 2020.
I am currently working in a client facing, but also laptop touching position where I am constantly "out of work". I am always on top of the things I should do, because I always do them right away or otherwise I know I would forget them. I have constant "impostor syndrome" and question myself on whether I am doing enough, because I always end up with all this downtime. The work has no set structure and we very much manage ourselves. I have secretly compared my calender to my coworkers and I tend to have more client appointments than most, yet for example this week I have just been bored out of my mind for days. And questioning if I am somehow doing this wrong.
I am having a remote day today and am just here posting. I don't know why I feel weird about it when rationally I know that I very much earn my wage and just do the work differently than others. I for example write very fast. And solve things very fast.
But my question remains, do neurotypicals just fake it? Or do they think they are busy all the time? I for one do a lot of remote work and at the office I introvert it. I am always about the work, not socializing much, so my worktime never goes to those things.
I eat at my desk while I work too, I tried the neurotypical style of taking breaks, but it just doesn't work for me mid-task. My breaks are the bus drives to clients houses or slacking in the morning pretending to be online in Teams.
But I am having to do a lot of pretending and I think that is the part that is draining me. I actually really like my work and am probably pretty good at it, but this keeping up appearances stuff is exhausting and causes all kinds of self doubt.
I did teaching previously and the daily structure in it with the shorter day was a lot easier to handle. But I can't find things to do for eight hours in my current work. And I know nobody works eight hours in the office, but why is the pretend so hard for me? I feel weird listening to audiobooks in my worktime and I want to stop feeling that way, but I think it's the autistic lawful good that makes me feel kind of bad about it.
And the other thing that really rubs me the wrong way about this is the sillyness of this pretend social contract. Its a contract my neurotype apparently can't sign.
I would much rather work 4 hours and live my life the other 4. How do people manage decades of this show, wasting their only lives, if they actually only work half the time and the rest is literally like throwing their only time on this earth down the toilet? How do they do it and remain sane in the process? It feels like a scam.
Yes, it is a scam. I think everyone feels a certain amount of how fake this ridiculous social contract is. Like, I think it's why the joke of hating to go work is so widespread; people actually like work overall, but hate the having to go in and having to pretend to by busy and enjoy it. This is part of the alienation of labor I think.
I think you're right that most people can just lie (to themselves?) and fake it for their bosses, because they feel they have to. That sucks that it's so absolutely draining for you. I don't get it so bad, but I definitely am (mentally and emotionally) exhausted after a day of being at work having to talk to lots of people
This is so real. I'm looking at my company and seeing the people who are in my position just sit at their desks and scroll their phones or chat with their buddies and it's just stupid. It feels like a daycare. Like, I just started, but these people have been here for years.. do they not have the itch to quit and go live their life?