Overwork by Brigid Schulte

I found this book in the ‘highlights’ section of my local library, and it came at the right time. Since suffering from academic burnout (and depression and anxiety) during my PhD (while having six other part-time jobs to make a living, because my studentships weren’t really enough), I became interested in work and all the social and legal implications around it. I consider myself an artist first (a writer, primarily). Still, I’ve also had a series of jobs to make a living because the money I make from my writing is pitiful and doesn’t even remotely get close to minimum wage. I know this is the case for many of my writer friends (actually, all of them). I’m pretty fine with it. I mean, I know writing as a profession is extremely devalued, and I’d like to fight to change things in that regard. But I also enjoy having other occupations – I’m a social creature by nature and an extrovert. When I was working in retail, for example, I really thrived by serving other people and aiming to make their days better through our short interactions. It not only made me feel useful, but it also made me feel closer to my community. (For context, I worked as a bookseller for a few years.) Now, I despise some jobs I’ve done (ahem, marketing is pretty up on the list, it was too soul crushing) and loved others (being an academic, teaching and researching Creative Writing). But the constant of my job life has been marked by overwork, uncertainty, precariousness, and generally feeling dehumanised by the businesses I have been part of as an employee. Sometimes I’ve wondered if that’s my fault (am I too sensitive, like my grandmother used to say? Am I just weak? Am I just too much of an idealist?) But also, slowly but surely, I come to realise that a lot of systems we are part of are not designed to make us feel cherished, or to make us feel like our development matters or that we are important. On the contrary, we are treated as liabilities, as highly disposable parts.