Why do we work? My whole life, I have not really wanted to go to work. Everything associated with work feels somehow improper to me, starting with the alarm clock. My contention is that our species, since coming down from the trees, has not evolved in some fantastically quick way as to make following some manufactured intangible idea like “time of day” a comfortable thing to do.

It’s unnatural to have a small bedside machine make a rude noise at six in the morning, and downright bizarre when the machine offers radio voices. Sometimes when I wake up, for a moment I think Don Connolly and Elizabeth Logan are in bed with me.

It’s not the money.

Working for money has never interested me enough to want to do it to the exclusion of other things. First, money from work seems to go towards other unnatural, intangible things, like the phone bill. Second, it takes time, energy and spirit away from what I think of as my real work, the work of becoming human.

Which is not to say I don’t possess an ingrained protestant work ethic — I feel badly for not producing enough. I do feel guilty sometimes when I don’t have productive days, when I can’t look at something I accomplished that will make me feel less guilty for the air I sucked in and the water I used.

I grew up with a workaholic.

My father worked constantly and died when he was fifty-two years old. It used to be I thought my father was ancient when he had his last heart attack.

Now, when I am only four years shy of that age, I see that he died very young. He was warned to slow down and could not. He was rarely home. When he was, he worked in his den.

Supper table conversation was dominated by his complicated complaints about the internal politics and policies of his workplace, while his wife sat silent and his children sat bewildered. The best of my father went onto the page and into his slide rule.

My father saw himself as what he was, not who he was. He defined himself by his job, and I do not.

My father would not approve of my career — learning to put up with myself, learning to love, working on the usual big questions: Why am I here? Where will I go when I die?

When I am caught up with work and run off my feet, meetings stacked up, appointments overlapping, I am distracted, have no time to think and I forget about the big questions. I forget that I am confused or dissatisfied or worried, that I am unkind and worse, capable of cruelty.

The distraction is easier, yes, but it does not offer me the profit I seek. Labour does. The work I do that is not tied to money — manual work, book work — does pay me in a kind of zen currency.

Why?Why do some of us work too hard? Workaholics like my father can’t seem to slow down until felled by illness or accident. Some are in positions of power and loath to leave them. I think it’s because power and prestige are intoxicating, and dealing with ourselves, with our inner selves, is too hard.

And a big fat paycheque pays a bigger mortgage and buys a bigger boat and allows us other distractions.

Long work hours take us away from ourselves.