As a one-time workaholic, I can certainly appreciate and understand this!

At the very beginning of my career, decades ago as a professional Air Force officer, I worked non-stop. I often got to the office early, by 7:30 when the shift workers started, originally just because I could use easy (and free) transportation from the other side of town. I would often work until 7 or 8 p.m., although not (as my managers supposed and praised me for) because I was incredibly dedicated.

It just so happened that the intelligence analysis I did was perfect for my nerdy, autistic self. My work became my special interest, and sometimes I could barely stand to pull myself away from it. (Really!? I get to spend hours pouring over this data and finding intriguing patterns in it that nobody else has managed to spot? And you PAY me for it? Living the dream here!)

But even now I wasn't dedicated on principle, I defined myself to myself and others by the sophisticated work that I did. I wasn't some ignorant kid from a poor family anymore. I held one of the highest security clearances offered by the military, and I was trusted to do critical professionalwork at a relatively young age. This was how I learned to value myself.

Later, after I left the Air Force and moved to New York City, I threw myself into working for an HIV service organization. Keeping up my accustomed work habits, I was almost always the first to arrive, usually unlocking the building for the day — and we were far from the only tenants. Evenings and weekends, I did HIV/queer activism. Again, I was pretty much always at work. I defined myself, primarily and possibly exclusively, by my work. I wasn't Lenny's partner, I was an HIV educator and AIDS activist.

When I left non-profit service work at almost at the end of the 1990s, I brought my work habits with me. Even in Montreal with a family and a child to raise, I was usually either AT work or in my home office, working. Because work was how I related to myself and identified.

Later in my life, in Detroit, as an entrepreneur and business owner, I had an app on my phone that me see and interact with the plastics recycling plant I helped manage. My phone constantly buzzed with incoming business emails and text messages.

I was never off work, literally. Sometimes, I got out of bed to work in the middle of the night.

Once again, I defined myself almost exclusively by my work. I was a plastics recycler, doing my level capitalistic best to help save the planet. (I would eventually be disillusioned by the harsh realities of the recycling myth the petroleum industry deliberately foisted on the public, but that's a different story.)

For a while after I retired early — well, for years — I was still always at work, either writing about queer issues and activism, or editing and managing what eventually became Prism & Pen.

I didn't know any other way to exist except to be at work 100% of the time. I didn't get how to define myself other than by the work I did.

Now, as a genetic metabolic condition catches up with my, and my health steadily declines, I can't work all the time. I don't have the energy or strength, and I'm probably never getting it back.

So now, I have to ask myself how to define myself, and what it means to meaningfully exist outside work.

I'm not sure I have all or even most of the answer to that question.