hard day's night

Yesterday I worked till dinner, had dinner over a couple of hours at a friend's place then worked from 10pm to 2am then got up at 7.30 for work and am staring the same routine in the face again (but with less time over dinner.

I say that not to whinge...actually, I do say that to whinge, but not to try and sound big-man (or "let the heat out of the oven door" as NP would say). Just emphasizing that I am genuinely really busy and not just "a bit" busy and having to stay in the office till 6 or something. I've worked the last few weekends and almost every weeknight of the last few weeks to make sure the next issue of the magazine gets out on time (deadline is next Tues). That's fine - in a way I don't mind that, though I get sick of really long hours - but the Head Honcho of the institute asked me last week if I can prepare a manuscript to accompany a 65-slide, 40-minute speech he's giving later in the year, and I have to do it by this Friday. I'd already planned to work nights and weekends to get the mag done before this came up. I did recognize it was, of course, a very good kiss-arse-of-HH (who seems a nice guy, BTW) opportunity, but 1) I don't want to kiss the arse of senior management people for the sake of kissing arses and 2) I really didn't know how I could do it and do a decent job.

I actually tried to handball it to my direct boss, but then he had to leave for Vietnam at short notice, and I was pretty much the only person left. And then I was asked - by the HH again - to write a speech (admittedly only a short one) based on a few bullet points for a senior member of staff to give at the 80th birthday of a former HH of the institute (also due Friday). This pissed me off. Why on earth couldn't a guy who's been a senior scientist for decades - presumably giving talks all over the world - and who's actually retired now (still working a bit as a consultant but not managing a department or anything) write a speech himself, especially as he knows the 80 y.o. already and I've never met him?? And this time I didn't even get a chance to handball it - I just got told I was doing it.

I seem to have kept things under control but I had a little stressy moment yesterday when I got back to the office from lunch to find that no less than 5 students from the local uni had turned up unannounced to interview me about my job as part of their Development Communication degree.

The whole thing makes me wonder - why do I try so hard to get the work done on time (and to a decent quality). If that is professionalism, what actually drives me to be professional?

I enjoy parts of the work, but I don't love it enough to feel good about working 15 hours a day. I have a few other things in my life that I wouldn't mind doing occasionally.

It's not because I'm being paid loads of money. My salary is high relative to local salaries, true, but not all that high by Oz standards (less than my last job in Oz, although this is tax-free and cost of living is much lower, so my saving capacity has increased). And I doubt that a high salary would be much incentive, anyway. Low salaries are apparently much more of a disincentive than high salaries are an incentive.

It's not through some sense of doing anything amazingly worthwhile on a human scale. I could paint a picture of it like that, I guess - working in international development ra ra ra, but I'm fairly convinced that if I didn't do this job it, it wouldn't disadvantage anybody (except maybe the few people at work who'd have to take up the slack.

So what drives me? Fear of failure? A desire to be well-liked? Banal financial stability (not to be taken for granted, true, but possibly not worth sacrificing the best years of one's life to attain). Blind adherence to convention / a Protestant work ethic (irrespective of my secular upbringing)?

I often feel like I'm pouring all my intellectual energies into something for which I really don't have that much passion. Would I not be better off spending my years studying things I'm really interested and spending a year or two to save the money to go on cheap backpacking travels? And, if I do want to contribute to some social good, as I claim, I suspect I'd have more impact dishing out meals at a soup kitchen.

That all makes me sound bitter. I'm not - I'm not unhappy with work just now. Although I seem to oscillate between self-flagellation due to doing too much and self-flagellation due to not doing enough. I'm no psychiatrist (though I have watched high-quality medical dramas that include psychiatrist characters), but I don't think that's healthy. I just can't quite understand why I spend so much bloody time doing it.