Not All Holidays Are Celebrateable – Yes I Know That’s Not A Real Word.

I tend to celebrate A LOT of holidays. Until the last few months, I had no idea that every day presented a cornucopia (or a bevy, if you will) of holidays just waiting to be celebrated. Take for instance tomorrow’s Fried Chicken Day. Yes, I’ll be at KFC for lunch hoisting up an original recipe chicken leg like a fat Elizabethan member of nobility hoists aloft a huge turkey leg. I’m always up for a good (if not quite legitimate) holiday celebration.

Today however is most definitely NOT one of those days. Today is Workaholics Day. When I found this out, my first inclination was to call in sick and not go to work today. After all, I am many things (most of which are not flattering according to my enemies and coworkers, uh, and family), but I am in no way even close to being considered a Workaholic. Embarrassingly, I actually had to look that word up. You mean to tell me that there are people in this world dedicated enough to their jobs to be addicted to it? There are people out there that don’t leave the minute the ‘official’ workday ends? This may be more shocking to me than the fact that I only recently saw Monty Python’s Holy Grail for the first time. Honestly, I wouldn’t even know what to say to a workaholic. Although, ‘what the heck is your problem, man’ comes to mind.

When I got to work today, I made sure to tell everyone that today was indeed Workaholics Day. The general response I got was something to the effect of ‘then what are you doing here?’ I think there’s really only one way to take a comment like that. I have therefore begun my secret word of the day. It’s ‘expedient.’ Now, that seemed like a good idea at the time, but I’m now in my second hour of my secret word and no one has used it yet. I guess I should have picked a more common word like ‘report’ or ‘concomitant.’ Actually, my boss sent me an email with concomitant in it, but I’m not sure how emails work on the whole secret word thing. Besides, I can’t really get him for saying the secret word. Well I could, but I’d probably end up getting home early today while carrying a box full of all my office’s personal belongings, if you catch my drift.

Since no one (including myself) finds me capable of being a workaholic, I’m tempted to take that as a challenge to prove to everyone just how hard I can work. Here’s the problem with that though, I really don’t want to. I’ve given a lot of thought to being a workaholic and everything necessary to accomplish that. First up would be me getting to work on time, if not early. Both would be major shifts in my lifestyle. Since I am not time carded, I usually leave the house at about the time I should be powering up my office PC. This change creates a necessary domino effect that I am not quite prepared to execute. I would have to get up earlier and that would necessitate me going to bed earlier. Going to bed earlier would impact my prime blogging time as well as my ability to have homemade nachos as a nighttime snack. Without my nighttime plate of nachos, I can’t sleep, so surely you can see the concerns I have with this one. I have finally achieved the perfect balance and harmony that my body requires to be as efficient and industrious as possible, and messing with that delicate balance can only produce disastrous effects. After all, when a seed finally starts growing into a plant, you don’t yank the plant from the ground, right? Ok, if it’s a weed, I guess that’s ok. For the sake of this analogy however, I feel I need to assert the fact that I am not a weed. Shrubbery maybe, but not a weed.

Let’s say I do get to work on time, my work habits would need to be changed to achieve true workaholic status. First and foremost here would be me needing to pay more attention at work, which would require me to not play as many pranks or all the other things I try to do to make the office environment more fun. I also believe that being a workaholic must mean no more ‘sneak’ naps while in my office. I’m not completely sure about this, but it’s a gut feeling I have. Also, I fear taking my second lunch everyday could be in jeopardy. Lastly, to be a true workaholic, I would be required to stay at work longer. Considering my day ends at 5PM and I already begin wrapping everything up daily shortly after lunch, a major operational adjustment needs to be made. I guess me getting a recess period instituted at work is now out the window.

Obviously, no matter how hard I might try, I just don’t think my current lifestyle and habits lend themselves very well to becoming a workaholic. I guess that makes me ‘work sober’ or the ‘designated non-worker.’ Yeah, I could be much better at those. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go back to looking busy when people walk by. Yes, that often requires more effort than actually working, but it’s all about principles man.