The impasse.

I recently had the good fortune of crossing paths with someone who was to become a close friend. A fellow creative, she and I instantly had too much in common; our conversations were lively, and our shared interests were innumerable.

There was just one thing we never could agree upon.

She was dedicated to her work in a way that I had never known anyone else to be. Work was her life, and her life was work. The two were completely indistinguishable, and she never failed to remind you of it.

She would spend her mornings, days, and nights at the office, always working away on what she saw to be the next big thing. When she wasn’t physically at work, she remained there both in mind and in spirit. Her thoughts were consumed by it, and so, too, were our conversations.

She was a firm believer in the philosophy of Charles Bukowski, constantly bringing it up under the shallow guise of evidence. As he so infamously wrote,

“Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.”

Not only did she take those words to heart, she took them literally.

Work drained her, clung to her back, and weighed her down into eventual nothingness. Her health was slipping, and her friends were becoming fewer and farther between. She had little left of what others would call a life, which only served as a reminder that she should dive even further into her work.

Where others would stop and pause, she would power on, confident that any setbacks were little more than a toll en route to her final destination.

(Though, what that was, I couldn’t say.)

Since then, I’ve thought a great deal about just how much of oneself a person should give to their work. I arrived at the following conclusion.

Much like a good workout, your work should ultimately leave you feeling good. Slightly drained and entirely breathless, yes — but good nonetheless.

Work should be a challenge, but it shouldn’t be everything. We never could agree on that, though, and eventually, we parted ways.

I imagine her work was grateful.