Toxic productivity

Here I am again, with my random musings,

We've talked a while ago about the fact that most societies tend to value human lives by their productivity. They have to be productive to be considered either successful or just worthy of being alive. One of the things that bothered me as I grew up, was that people weren't interested in knowing who you genuinely were. It wasn't anymore about your taste in hobbies, your enjoyment of sports, or some -non-productive skills- such as singing, dancing, or the likes. NO. As I grew up, I realized that it was only the job I had. It was the salary I earned. I was the diplomas I earned. Nothing about who I was mattered. Some of my strongest friendships were made without me knowing exactly what type of job my friends did. The question was never asked (but rather, I'd wait for them to talk to me about their job instead), because that never defined a person's value to me.  

However, I found myself in several situations where your "job" as your "identity" and based on what you were doing, you were either dismissed or revered. Then, at my last job, I realized I only had value as an employee/ person by the workload I could handle. The bigger the workload, the more I became visible. It was so much that I ended up carrying half of that company on my back, main husband carried the rest on his. Others didn't care about anything but our productivity, even co-workers only asked questions about "how much work did you do today? could you take some of my own cause I couldn't handle them today? could you show me how you did?" One of my bosses even mistook me for someone else. Ahah, that's how bad things were. 

This led me to wonder why, as a writer, I ended up being frustrated when I wasn't writing "enough". I ended up chastising myself for not being good enough. How could I not be able to write a page a day, at the minimum? How could I need one or more days to rest because I have an art block? Why can't I be like Stephen King who writes books as he breathes? It becomes stressful and in turn, my body becomes sick. When I don't write/ sketch for a while, I feel like a complete failure because I wasn't productive. My value, my worth, suddenly becomes what I can make, which is a toxic way of thinking and very reductive. We are much more than what we can produce. We are much more than our jobs. we are not more worthy because we can work ourselves to death and no less because we can't handle a huge workload. 

Unfortunately, this is something that too many people still believe, and something so ingrained in our mentalities that moving away from this mentality is really hard, but necessary. My best friend, Nate, told me that we have to seek balance. Make sure that our work doesn't devour us and allows for family/ me time, and make sure that we remain careful and focused at work to keep things going. He told me that I shouldn't equate myself to the amount of work I can do and If I needed a few days before working on the book again, then I needed those days to be able to continue that book. That says nothing about who I am as a person or my worth. 

SO yes,  Being productive does give a nice feeling, and I would be a liar if I said I wasn't pleased to see the progress I made with my first draft. however, One should remain careful and not turn productivity into something toxic where we equate productivity with self-value and worth. It would quickly turn anything into a stressful moment and we don't want that.  We don't want that.