The Job I loved was still just a job
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Not everyone can say that they love their job and get incredible fulfillment from it. But for those who do, the effects of chronic pain can make it devastatingly difficult to keep doing that work. I continued to teach for two and a half years in horrific pain while seeking proper medical treatment that could restore my health and ability to function. I had no way of knowing then that this wasn’t in the cards. It was difficult and brutally painful to walk to my office from the parking structure (exactly 83 steps…I counted each one), stand long enough to teach, think straight, and focus on grading and everything else my job demanded. But I loved — and needed — that job, and I still believed I could find the answer to my medical issues, and all would be well.
Throughout this time, it never once occurred to me to take medical leave, and I never considered looking for something else that wouldn’t be so physically straining. I was a single earner, and I felt the pressure to return to what seemed like a sure thing. Oh, what I wish I could tell my former self now... Everything I have learned and experienced since then makes me wish I had been more open to considering other, more realistic work options. Then again, I still didn’t know this condition would be permanent, and that I’d still live with pain years later.
My identification with my work may have been over the top, and I now realize that I prioritized my dedication to my work and the environment I loved over my health. I couldn’t grasp that this contributed to further decline, and that my perseverance might have had a reasonable limit. I wonder how I might have reacted if someone had said to me, “It’s just a job! Find something else that will be easier on you and won't cost you as much physically, or maybe stop working for a while and let yourself recover!” As I write this, I imagine a wild horse looking at a cowboy determined to break it. I probably would have refuted this entirely and stomped the earth with my feet in defiance. However, I now wish I had said those words to myself and believed that, ultimately, even the job I had and loved was, in essence, “just a job.” I wish I had been more aware that pushing myself to the point I did, while hoping for miracles, was not in my best interest.
What I couldn’t consciously see at the time was how much of myself had been anchored in that position: my sense of financial security (we don’t pay teachers nearly enough in this country, and I was by no means rich), a sense of meeting my adult responsibility (health insurance, life insurance, etc.), my core identity, a significant source of purpose and pride, and perhaps above all, it was a position in which I got to experience a level of “flow” that energized me to no end. I couldn’t see how tightly I was clinging to each of those aspects, not yet grasping that there might be another, and healthier, way to achieve the same ends if I just let go of the fear that had locked me so firmly in place. Looking back, my resistance to the changes taking place -- ones I certainly hadn’t asked for -- resulted in so much self-inflicted pain of the emotional kind.
Once things reached the point where continuing to work was no longer an option, the administrative process that followed put me through quite the wringer. This additional stress layered itself on top of the physical, financial, and medical challenges I was already facing. I won’t elaborate here, but that specific part of the experience taught me that no matter how shiny the object, it may not be what it appears to be. Ultimately, it seemed it was “just a job” after all. Oh, how tightly I clung to hope, my idealism, and my work ethic for something that ended up caring much less about me than I did about it.
Years later, I find myself in my early 60’s, living on disability and worrying about what might happen if that goes away before I reach full retirement age. Although I was able to access my 401k funds early, I find myself relying on that to supplement my monthly income at a rate that alarms me. Those funds were meant to see me through the golden years of life, not to draw from just to make ends meet far sooner than that. It’s certainly not a situation I had ever expected to find myself in after decades of dedication and focus throughout my professional career. And so, I sit with the feelings that arise when I look back at how much I put into my former work life, only to find myself wrestling with a very different kind of fear -- not the fear that kept me pushing forward, but the uncertainty of what comes next.
Many people living with (or on) disability know this landscape well — the constant calculations, the unpredictability of the future, the very real worry about finances, healthcare, and what might happen if the fragile stability we’ve built suddenly shifts.
When I boil all the emotions — worry, regret, resentment, uncertainty, hopelessness — down to one essential truth statement, it would be this: It’s not fair.
All the nights and weekends, holiday and semester breaks working my tail off and giving it everything I had, all the mornings I was up at 5:00 a.m. to get a head start on grading and planning, all the time it took away from my family and friends...all the additional stress I was put under when I was most in need of help…only to find myself wondering how I’ll make it through whatever arises in the coming years, finding myself dependent on others in ways I never was before, and juggling all the basic, everyday things I need to hire help with from resources I don’t have…it’s not fair. And there’s nothing I can do about it. And I hate that.
Every now and then, it’s tempting to become cynical. It’s tempting to counsel my daughter not to give too much of herself to her career to the point of depletion and chronic exhaustion. It’s hard to watch people keep giving themselves up to their work or cause without offering them a cautionary warning.
There are days when these feelings overwhelm me, and other days when I can set them aside and keep moving forward. On those days, I remember that I’m still one of the lucky ones. I do have that 401k, whereas many others do not. I still have my house, while disability has cost so many others everything they have. I have people who love and support me, while millions are facing these challenges completely on their own. The schedule I follow now is one I set for myself. I remind myself that I have a new purpose now and plenty of reasons to look forward to each new day. And when I can bear all of this in mind, I can look in the mirror and honestly tell myself that things are not as hopeless as they appear.
If I could go back to my early 20’s and change anything, it would be to prioritize myself and my fundamental needs, seek a job that paid reliably and well, and follow a career path that had firmer guardrails against overextension — physically, emotionally, and mentally. Pursuing a noble profession for the sake of what one can offer others or contribute to the world is just that, noble, but there has to be some balance and some way to protect oneself against a career that thrives on that most human capacity for wanting to make a difference.
This isn’t to say that doing good in the world or working hard is a bad idea. (It’s not.) What I’m saying here is that we might benefit from an occasional internal reality check. Life brings us all kinds of surprises, both welcome and uninvited, and having a Plan B, or even C, in place never hurts. And when something as life-changing as pain forces us to step back, we sometimes discover that the systems we gave everything to cannot give that devotion back.
If you’re dealing with pain and your work is contributing to your further decline in health and putting you further behind in your chances of recovery, I invite you to consider whether it might be “just a job” for you, too. Maybe it is, and perhaps it isn’t…but the question may still be worth asking. For those among you who are struggling to keep things exactly as they were before the onset of your pain, I’m talking to you, with all the compassion and empathy I have. Open yourself to the possibilities that life’s changes lead you toward, even if you can’t see them yet. This is the time to soften, to ease, rather than to clutch desperately at something that no longer serves you. I know it’s hard and sometimes scary. But not letting go is harder. There’s very little on this earth, if anything, that is worth your health and well-being.
Life isn’t always fair, and that’s just reality. Yet we may just have more choices available to us than we realize, before life chooses for us. We must never lose sight of what matters most, no matter how great our passion or desire to give it our all, for all the right reasons.
With you on the journey,
Julie
* disability career chronic pain job medical leave work-life balance well-being