Working it out

Photo credit: Marianne Møllmann

I have spent more than two decades in the United States, feeling slightly foreign. Social rules that didn’t make sense (see: dating), systems failures so massive they led to murder (see: healthcare), micro-cultures that made feeling I belonged always slightly out of reach (see: NYC vs. DC vs. Boston vs. Vermont, and that’s just the East Coast).

But of all these disconnects, the most defining, the one that had me constantly thinking, I really am not from here, was the difference in work culture. The way we, in the United States, define ourselves by what we do, glorify overwork, and work through our vacation, if we ever were to take one.

I cannot count the times I have told US colleagues that there is another way. That research shows European workers are way more productive than American ones, because they take time off to truly rest. That stress isn’t a badge of honour, it is just stress.

And then I moved back to Europe.

I think what I realised first is that I really like to work. Or rather: I don’t think of work as work, which partially has to do with the fact that I work in the not-for-profit sector, doing mission-driven work. There is a point to what we do, and so I tend to think of work as how to do my part to be of use. But more importantly, it also has something to do with the fact that I find it extremely hard to let go. When I think of colleagues taking the usual European 3-4 week vacation, it makes me feel stressed rather than envious: what would my inbox look like at the end of that time? What if I become a bottleneck for someone else’s work while I am gone?

This is a good time to interject that, perhaps despite appearances, I do not have an inflated sense of my own importance. I know that my colleagues are perfectly capable of doing what needs to be done in my absence. I am the one I do not trust. And then again, I also know it is just a question of habit.

I am writing this as I am about to sign off email, phone, and the internet for 10 days. I don’t remember the last time I did that. I do know that it is perfectly culturally appropriate for what I do and where I am, and so I just have to dig out my inner European and get used to it.