While it could be argued that I was only mildly successful because I lacked either, I like to think that having been even mildly successful was only because, for most of my life, I lacked either and thus sought - and found - my validation in work.
Quite apart from the fact that being married, with a mortgage and 2.3 kids, would've precluded me from some of my more offbeat assign-ments, I also noticed that my married counterparts already found so much self-validation in taking out the garbage or fixing a dripping tap that they considered their working hours just an inconvenient, albeit necessary, interlude between busy weekends with family and friends.
As for me, I regarded weekends as an unwelcome interruption to an exciting week in the office and already lived an obsessive "work-work balance" long before the alternative had been invented. In fact, by the time the expression "work–life balance" became fashionable in the late 1970s, I had already embarked on a life in which work had become not only the most important - and the most fulfilling - part of my life, but indeed life itself. As my favourite and still living philosopher Alain de Botton wrote much later, "There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life."
Work has never been a four-letter word for me. It's been a bucketload of fun that's given me a bucketload of memories to last me for the rest of my life. To paraphrase Kenneth Grahame, " 'And you really live for your work? What a jolly life!' 'For it and with it and on it and in it' said moi."
However, now it's time to take out the garbage and fix a dripping tap.
