Back when I lived in Manhattan and made my living in the world of fashion magazines, I worked constantly. That's why anyone goes to New York, to work. I remember regularly waking up still drunk from some party I'd been reporting at earlier, with my big, old Macbook Pro glowing on my chest, and going right back to filing stories. Amongst my circle, all up-and-coming editors, influencers and media moguls, that kind of commitment to your gig was glorified. We were networking, hustling, building. And the thrill of the next open door, the next promotion or connection was too enticing to pass up.

So we worked. A lot. And whether you live in a big city or a small town, you know exactly what I'm talking about. In America, many of us do some version of the same thing. We are a culture founded on a rugged, individualist fantasy of success and glory in the workplace—the American Dream! Hard work and perseverance, and logging extra long hours: lunch at our desks, emails on the toilet, conference calls on vacation. And while the COVID pandemic may've taken us out of the office, it's brought our obsession with productivity into our homes in an unprecedented way. It can feel like we're surrounded on all sides by work, work, work.

Now if you're looking for me to denounce work or capitalist culture completely or suggest you trade in your iPhone Pro for three robes and a bowl, you're in the wrong place. You can go read Be Here Now for that. (RIP to the legend, Ram Dass.) I like working. I like making money, and being able to afford the nice things I want. I read Valet., for chrissakes. But something happened to me back in 2016 that made me question everything I thought I knew about work and success—I burned the fuck out.

It all started when I cashed in my journalism cred, sold out and became a freelance copywriter. Or, as I like to call it, a word mercenary. I bootstrapped a creative agency and was pulling in well over six figures a year. I worked constantly and had almost zero boundaries with clients: if you needed banner ad copy or an email subject line in the middle of the night, I was writing it. But I was also perpetually anxious and rarely left my computer. What if I missed something? To paraphrase Steve Earle, I had a two pack habit and a laptop tan. And a closet full of designer clothes, a weekend home in the Hudson Valley and anything else that I bought with the money that wasn't bringing much satistifcation. I was too stressed out to enjoy them. All the while, I knew I was spinning out, but I was terrified to cut back, or turn down any new gig dangled in front of me. That was the freelancer's creed: Never turn down work. You never know if it'll be there next time.

By the time I moved to California in 2017, I already knew I needed to step away from the hamster wheel for a while. My circuits were fried. And eventually, the fear I'd always had of letting go of contacts, began to pale in comparison to the fear I had of waking up at 50 having worked myself through the meat of my life, perhaps my children's lives, too. I was a latchkey kid who'd seen my own parents and many of my friends' parents do versions of that, and I'd vowed to never repeat it. But that's how these things tend to go: We end up right in the jaws of the very thing we tried to escape.

So for three years, I took it easy in California. I lived on my dwindling savings. I ate tacos on shaded verandas in the middle of the day. I bought a cool, old convertible, and drove it back and forth from my Echo Park bachelor pad to my friend Mikael's artist compound in Mount Washington where we sat around laughing at our good luck. We'd managed to escape the rat race. All our friends back East chained to their desks were suckers. We had figured it out.

Now, I'm a firm believer in stepping back from anything you do to excess to examine why you do it, but I went a little too far in those years. My pendulum swung from Gordon Gecko to Jeffrey Lebowski. I did get some perspective, though. And I saw when I stopped working constantly, that all my hustling had been powered by fear. The slew of misconstrued beliefs I had: If I work less, I won't have nice stuff. If I work less, I won't be a “real man,” or attractive to potential partners. If I work less, I won't have the lifestyle I want, etc. All proved to be untrue in one way or the other. But without work to define who I was, I started to feel totally listless. A lot of men experienced this during the initial cuts last year as the pandemic landed: Who am I without my job? For me, those lean years I spent in Los Angeles were the impetus to find out. So when I started my life coaching practice at the end of 2019, I knew I wanted to make sure I didn't fall into the same old trap of all work, no play.

One of the coaches I like, a guy named Steve Chandler, has a book called Time Warrior, that's all about tweaking that balance between work and play. And the crux of it is about people pleasing. Chandler says the reason why most of us work so much is because we have a hard time saying “no” to others, and a hard time doing good things for ourselves that don't involve a backslap or “good job!” from a boss, co-worker, partner, or even the internet ('gram or it didn't happen, anyone?).