Underachiever

My name is Prairie Wanderer.  And I am an underachiever.

I’m not a social climber.  I’m not a go-getter.  I certainly don’t keep up with the Joneses and you won’t catch me being a ‘company man’.  I’m not particularly ambitious, at least not financially, and my nose is nowhere near the grindstone.  I don’t put in extra hours and I’ve scratched myself from the rat race a while back.

I am an underachiever.

It’s taken me years to come to terms with being an underachiever, and what being an underachiever means.

For the record, I have a very pedestrian job at a modest salary with a local building supply company.  I’m good at what I do, and am well-liked and respected in the business, but it is not necessarily an intellectually taxing occupation.  I could do something with more prestige and more money and more opportunities for advancement, but it comes with more responsibilities and headaches and stress.  I don’t handle stress well.  In fact, I handle stress extremely poorly; I overeat, drink, smoke and generally blow a lot of money when under pressure.  Not a good scene, really.  And at the end of the day, I like what I do.  I like my coworkers (for the most part) and my clients and my little office and the rest of it.  I’m not working 14 hours a day anymore, and I’m not tying myself in knots anymore.

I used to be a company man and put my nose to the grindstone and all of that.

I was a sucker.  I knew it even then, but I sacrificed myself to the altar of ‘hard work’, thinking that I was Doing What Was Expected of Me.  The ex and I lived in an older house right beside a brand-new sub development in what was becoming a swankier and more exclusive part of town. 

I hated every single second of it.  I hated the suburbs and suburbanites and the whole lifestyle associated with it.  Nearly the whole suburban existence involved households so terrified of being out of step with everyone else, they were practically neurotic over it.  One person cut the grass.  EVERYONE was out cutting the grass within the hour, like clockwork.  One person on the block got a boat, EVERYONE was looking at boats the next week.  One house had a wine and cheese thing, someone else had to do one, except they would slightly outdo the last one.  The suburbs were dull and vacuous, and full of dull and vacuous people.  They gulped anxiety medication by the fistful and from what I recall, no one was ever really happy.  They worshipped lame fads.  When Sideways came out, everyone started becoming wine snobs.  When Trading Spaces was on TLC, everyone played at being interior designers.  Yoga?  Check.  Pilates?  Check.  Words like man-cave embarrassingly floated into the lexicon. 

As I said before, 14 hour days weren’t uncommon for me.  I worked and worked and worked, and then worked some more.  It was a common thing in my neighbourhood.  Everyone was working.  No one was home before 6 o’clock.  At least one parent in every household worked evenings and weekends.  And then they came home and did housework and yardwork.  And in the summer, they drove out to their lakeside cottages and did work out there. 

Partly, I worked so much because my ex-wife Annie was notoriously bad at holding down jobs.  The best she could do was 6 months consistently before she was ‘let go’, and it conveniently coincided with her eligibility to collect employment insurance.  Needless to say, it was a major point of contention in our marriage.  I forwent finishing my own education so she could go back to school so she could find meaningful work that she wouldn’t ditch after a few months.  This was easily the worst life decision I’ve ever made.  But the decision was made for good or ill, and I worked ridiculously long hours to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads, doing work I absolutely hated.  For her part, shiny new certificate in hand, she continued the same job shenanigans she always did.  Work x number of months, and then find a way to get herself off so she could go back on unemployment insurance.  Rinse.  Repeat.  Eventually she did find a steady job, but it was part-time.  And the cost of putting Nick into daycare made it almost meaningless from a financial standpoint.

Things came to a head in Christmas of 2007.  In hindsight, I think I had a nervous breakdown.  At any rate, after Christmas, I simply refused to go back to work.  I quit my job and took 3 months off.  Just like that.  Between my ex-wife’s lackadaisical attitude to work and money, my job, which was burning me out both mentally and physically, all the overtime I was putting in, and the growing emotional and physical distance between my ex and I, I was just done.  I needed a break.  At that point, I hadn’t even had a proper holiday in almost 7 years.  I was exhausted and overwhelmed on every single level, and was operating that way for nearly 5 straight years.  I had constant migraines.  I grinded my teeth so badly the dentist told me that my teeth were a year or two way from some major work.  I smoked like a chimney, stared at the ceiling wide awake night after night, chewed through bottles of antacids and I phoned in sick at least a few days a month. I had a knot in between my shoulder blades.  My knees killed me.  I felt like a 60 year old in a 30 year old’s body.

I was done.  D-O-N-E.

I stayed home for a few months and looked after Nick full time.  When I was ready, I took a job with less pay and normal hours and much less stress.  I explained to my ex this was how things were going to be from now on.  She was going to have to step up to the plate if she wanted our standard of living to stay the same or get better.

And a little over two years later, we split.  In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised. 

This is all a much longer story with implications that run much deeper.  This is fit for probably about 5-6 blog posts and it casts me in as much negative light as Annie.  But we’ll leave that for another day.

Anyway, I stepped back and scaled down.   Downshifted if you will.  And now I couldn’t imagine living any other way. 

And I don’t see it as underachieving at all.  I am living life to the fullest.  Just on my terms, no one else’s.  I invest my time and energy into the things that matter to me; the boys, photography, soccer, friends and family.  I’m not a bum. I earn a living, I pay my bills, and I fulfill my obligations to my kids.  But the things I work the hardest on don’t have a financial payoff.  I’m cool with that.  And there are so many people who think I’m stone cold daft for not achieving my professional potential, but at the exact same time admire me for having the conviction to say no to all of that.

I ain’t rich.  But I’m happy.

- PW