Work has always played an overly important role in my life. The thing that must take precedence over everything. Around which anything else must be crammed in - or not done at all. It was something I learned from dad. I've lived most of my adult life doing things that I felt would have won his love and approval had he been around (he died in 1981, when I was 20). One of those things was "putting in the hours" as he would have put it.
Dad was born in 1915 and grew up in a mining community in South Wales, where unemployment reached 28% in the 1920s. Food was short. Many families existed on tick from the Co-op and the kindness of neighbours. Kids got little more than a very elementary education. Dad's parents couldn't afford to raise two boys, so dad was brought up by Auntie Polly, his father's sister. Auntie Polly lived with her other four brothers (three of whom were miners, the fourth was only a few years older than dad) and her sister who was a milliner. Between them they sacrificed a huge amount for dad and Tudor, the youngest brother, determined that they wouldn't have to earn a living down the mines. Dad knuckled down and "put in the hours", ultimately training to be a woodwork and technical drawing teacher. He left South Wales, eventually landing in middle class Winchester, where I was born and brought up.
The struggle of those years defined his approach to life: "Don't be beholden to anyone" and "Don't let the bastards grind you down". He was driven by fear. Fear that I might have to suffer the hardships he'd witnessed in his early life. During the day, he worked as a teacher, leaving for work at 7:45. He came home for tea at 5:00pm. Three or four nights a week he was back off to the school an hour later to run the Further Education Centre. One weekend in every 6 he visited Polly in Wales. Most Saturdays were spent in his workshop at school making furniture for our home.
Work was a way of life for dad. An unnecessary way of life. He owned a 3-bedroom house on a quarter acre plot on the outskirts of Winchester and only had one child to support. Also, there was the second income from mum's tutoring and supply teaching. Eventually, I believe his quest for security and independence for our family drove him to his death from a sudden heart attack 6 months after he retired.
He never let up on himself or on me. Education had been the way out for him and he saw it as my salvation too. Outside school, my life was just as structured as it was inside. With piano practice at 7am (monitored using the timer on the cooker), meals at set times and homework properly supervised. I was already well into the work groove by the time he died. At the time, I was studying at Oxford Poly with a constant stream of bar and waitressing jobs filling my evenings and weekends. In my 20s, I worked as Assistant Catering Manager at Farnham Hospital with bar work in the evenings and on Sundays. By the time I was 30, I was earning enough but continued with weekend work. And when I eventually did give it up, I immediately launched myself into an Open University degree followed by Wine & Spirit Education Trust exams. It wasn't until I joined Diageo in 1995 that I finally just had the one job and nothing to study.
Six years later, I became a self-employed copywriter and the whole thing started again. Working hard to get the business off the ground. Putting way more hours into each piece of work than I was paid for (for fear that it wasn't good enough). As I became more successful, I continued to take every project that came my way. It was normal for me to work around 60 hours a week, cram in a social life and live in a constant state of stress. Even though, by now, rather like dad, I was financially secure - with a paid-off mortgage and no children or other dependents. I love my work. But it was an unhealthy obsession. An exhausting way to live.
And so it continued. Until nearly two years ago, when my 95 year old mum fell off a chair and was admitted to hospital with a broken shoulder. I railed against the reduced hours bitterly. Because work was my thing. But it turned out to be the beginning of finding a new way to work...