Never enough: Untangling work, meaning, and worth

What does work mean to you? Is it what gives our lives meaning and purpose? Or is it just a means to an end, a necessity for getting by? Is it a status indicator? Does it define who we are? Or is it purely our enslavement as unwitting cogs in the capitalist machine?

We spend most of our formative years in an education system that prepares us for it and then once employed most of our waking hours doing it. It’s one of the first things people ask about when we meet them.

Whatever we believe work to mean to us, how often does it match with the reality of our experiences? And what happens to those of us who do not fit neatly into the mainstream concept of the “ideal worker”?

My work journey started like many others’: delivering the local paper at four cents a piece. There have been many jobs in the three decades since, too many to list in my frantic search for the “right fit”. I am still recovering.

Should I be grateful because I at least got the chance to try when so many don’t even get that opportunity?

Every disabled person has a different story of their struggle with work. This one is mine.

From the beginning I had learnt to internalise the centrality of a “good” job to a person’s worth and identity. Growing up in a first generation immigrant family, there was neverending pressure to “succeed”. Once upon a time (according to all the period novels I read), young girls looked forward to debutante balls – when they would be unveiled before society and admired for their beauty and poise and readiness for a good marriage. Their families would revel in the validation that came by association. For me, my teens were an intense build up to my grand unveiling as a “very useful person” post-graduation (the implication, of course, being there are “less useful people”).

Should I be grateful that my lack of conventional beauty at least didn’t stand in my way of having value – so long as I ramped up my productivity and could land a good job?

I had seen many of my peers fall along the way. Children whose consistent poor marks at school would be the subject of their parents whispered shame. “If only he/she could be more like your daughter”, they might say to my parents. Whenever I overheard these conversations, I would feel embarrassment and, yes, some pride, but mostly I just felt relief that I had survived another day. Then the horror of the realisation that it could be me who fell short next time so I had better keep up the pace.

And of course, there was always a kid who was better than me. Smarter, more talented at piano, higher marks, more helpful around the house… and I was made well aware at every opportunity, ominous reminders to never let my guard down.

By the time I was in my final year of university, I realised achieving high marks wasn’t going to be enough for my great emergence into adulthood. I also had to land one of the “better” jobs. The higher my academic performance, the greater the expectation of the prestige of my first professional role.

Now I had to find time and energy to learn the fine art of applying for white collar jobs, on top of studying for exams and writing a thesis. By the end of the year I could craft a shining resume and highly polished cover letters that managed to sell this apparently brilliant stranger even to myself. I went to every interview workshop on campus to rehearse and fine tune the firmness of my handshake, the steadiness of my eye contact, the tone of my voice to convey just enough confidence but not too much, and pre-empt and memorise answers to every possible question so that I could perform on autopilot through the inevitable stress and overwhelm of an actual interview. Like everything else, I gritted my teeth and accepted that it was just another behemoth task I had to complete to perfection in order to survive. I never questioned why I was working so hard to pretend to be someone else. A fish doesn’t question why it needs water.

Before graduation, I had applied for over 50 jobs (I kept a spreadsheet), attended dozens of harrowing interviews of every format (1:1’s, panels, group assessments, online and face to face, I was even flown interstate), all during the stress of my final year of university. Somehow, I passed with flying colours. I received my degree and multiple offers to join the most coveted graduate programs.

I was finally proud, but I was utterly exhausted. I was increasingly relying on unhealthy and unsustainable ways of coping, and my body was suffering. But at least I had passed the test. I had spent my entire school career – all 17 of my formative years from age five to 22 – preparing for this moment. I had survived the ultimate trial to prove that I had value. I was now officially a “very useful person” and my family could bask in the glory. The relief was beyond words. I could breathe easier now, right?

No one prepared me for the actual working world though. There were no workshops on how to navigate the day to day challenges of a workplace. I couldn’t rehearse how to speak in meetings (despite the excellent verbal communication skills I had displayed in the interview), I was mortified every time I had to ask for verbal instructions to be repeated because my brain couldn’t retain it. I couldn’t deal with the overwhelm of multiple competing high priorities (despite writing the opposite in my cover letter – but that’s what everyone did right?), or how to manage conflicts with colleagues. I had trouble seeing my tasks to completion and it didn’t help that I had no interest in them. I was in a field that I found utterly meaningless and intolerably boring in an industry that was all high stress, KPI’s and testosterone, with values that were incompatible with mine.

I was clueless on navigating office politics and gossip, or how to cope with being unfairly treated, or how to continue getting up each morning filled with dread, but having to drag myself back there day after day.

I quietly agonised over whether managers were wondering why I was not displaying the leadership qualities they were sold (let’s be honest, they were), or whether they were cottoning on to how “useless” I actually was despite my impressive academic results. People call this imposter syndrome but that didn’t accurately describe the hell I was in. No one I opened up to could relate. I had used up everything I had to get here, to being a certified “very useful person” – I never recovered from the shock of having to continue proving it.

All I had to fall back on was what I knew – pushing myself through the pain to work harder. I would stay late, get in early, check and recheck my work. I would pour my soul into the tasks I was given and live for scraps of recognition, only to be expected to do it again and again but only better and faster.

My peers were starting to get promoted, change to better jobs, move overseas. They were spreading their wings and flying. It was all I could do to stay afloat. I was withering away. What lay at the end? Would I disappear completely? But the alternative couldn’t even bear thinking about.

Somehow I managed to keep this up for years bouncing between different jobs and periods of unemployment. The optimism of starting anew, then the constant need to be always masking, the pressure to overachieve, the subsequent burnout, the slow recovery, only to force myself back in to repeat the cycle.

To me, the typical workplace is a war zone, and I am the displaced civilian caught up in a conflict that is not mine, just trying to survive each day. But I kept trying and hoping I would find somewhere I belong and where I can thrive.

What is the answer when such workplaces seem to be a mythical utopia for so many of us? Is it about changing ourselves so we can adapt to what we’ve been given? Is it about continuing to search and hope that a place exists where we are truly nurtured? Do we try to redefine our own relationship and expectation of work? Is it about rebelling or giving up and finding another path altogether? Perhaps we start our own business or not-for-profit, maybe we volunteer instead, accept unemployment, or elect to stay at home with the kids if the option is there.

How do we make sense of something so complex as our relationships with work when we have so little control over what is out there, when we have been gaslit and indoctrinated so thoroughly into tying our self-worth with our output?

It has been many years since I left that status-defining role – the job my family boasted about to their friends. By the time I finally left, I was burnt out beyond recognition. Not your everyday career burnout. This was a burnout that had been in progress since the day I started school.

Still, what pushed me to finally resign was not self-respect or self-care. It was my absolute indignation upon witnessing first-hand my industry’s complicity in the exploitation of severely disadvantaged migrant workers – making the most of the lax labour laws in other countries. It was only then that I allowed myself to leave. I had less tolerance for injustice and the oppression of others than for myself.

For me, work will always be a source of puzzling power dynamics, sky high expectations, intense triggers, and the prospect of never being good enough. But I keep returning to it for the promise of meaning, belonging, connection to others and a sense of purpose.

Can I ever find a way to navigate work and its profound rewards without falling into the pits of despair concealed throughout its landscape? Can I truly disconnect my sense of self-worth from my “usefulness”?

When I think about others – friends, clients, my children, I see only their inherent value. Their brilliant quirks, their wisdoms and unique insights, their lights shining bright or still hidden but just waiting to burst forth. This unit for measuring a person’s worth seems to be one I reserve only for myself. Can I truly divorce myself of the narrative instilled into me that my existence must be paid for with blood?

Employment, value and our right to exist – those things have become muddled and entwined in the process of commodifying human output. Our wellbeing is being sacrificed upon the altar of capitalist productivity. It is ableist but it is also a much more universal cancer – the disabled experience is just a canary in the coal mine for the suffering of broader society.

I know how lucky I am to have the option of exploring self-employment. I don’t need to deal with a boss, colleagues or a hostile physical environment. But it comes with its own set of challenges and, of course, my own demons. After years of therapy, self-compassion is no longer just a vague concept. I’ve come to understand that needs can be legitimate and value can be inherent. But I still struggle often and probably always will. At times, I still find myself looking for those traditional markers of success to define my self-worth, and overcompensating when they are not there (hello perfectionism my old frenemy!), leading to burnout.

It is frustrating to be constantly sucked into the same cycles and sometimes, when I’m in the thick of it, I feel like I have failed at healing too. But then, I notice moments of kindness from myself towards myself. I notice that this round does look slightly different to the last. I didn’t push myself as far before recognising I was in trouble. I am more willing to lean on my supports and to ask for help instead of soldering on. I can reflect with less shame. I can offer myself some grace these days.

There are things we can control and there are things we can’t. There are things we can change about ourselves and things we can’t. There are traumas that can be healed by doing the work and there is neurobiology that is fixed. There are compromises we can make at low cost and ones that will make us truly miserable. There are realities about the world we must accept in order to move forwards and there are fights that we choose to take on. And there are possibilities out there that we haven’t discovered yet, or opportunities that haven’t come along yet, or maybe we know what we want but just haven’t figured out how to make it happen. And there are all the in-betweens that my black and white brain tends to forget.

For many of us it is still, and might always be, a work in progress – a continuing process of trial and error and self-discovery.

Work will always be an important part of my identity – but is no longer all of it. And what work can look like has changed. It doesn’t have to be about how much I earn, a swanky job title, kudos from the boss, or be considered economically “useful”. Work can be about creativity and hyperfocus and making mistakes and new ideas and messiness and effort and connections and pride and tears and fulfillment. It can be what I choose it to be, within my accepted reality.

It is now far more detangled from my sense of self-worth than it was. But it is a continuing journey and continuing struggle. I am still learning to better understand myself, deeply and without judgment. I am still learning to better understand the world and work through my fears of it, to understand the possibilities and the limitations and to nurture the belief that I have a place in it.

Unless you are one of the lucky few who have found their niche, there is no map to follow. For those of us who need to work, all we can do is keep exploring – take risks when we are able, be kind to ourselves when we aren’t, and keep believing that we deserve, just like everyone else, to chart our own course, to be valued, to shine and to belong.