I don't think we were always this way, but at some point, my husband and I became workaholics.
I think this insane work ethic was a product of necessity. Dissertations, jobs that brought in the money, kids and all of it at the same time warped us. We felt like we had to work all the time or something terribly bad was going to happen. Even now, I spent three hours working on an essay and I'm organizing a reading list for the library.
But we really don't need to be this way. My essays are never going to pay the mortgage. I enjoy writing them, but I don't have to sit down to the computer the minute the kids get on the school bus. And it really doesn't matter if the socks are folded or not. The world isn't going to end, if Jonah and Steve waste an entire Saturday afternoon watching the European soccer matches. And Ian will be just fine, if I let him play video games for five hours straight.
So, we're making a conscious effort to slow down and to stop feeling guilty for squandering an entire afternoon reading a Jane Austin novel.
Apt. 11d 
I started to say I was a recovering workaholic, too. But I realized that I wasn’t, and neither is my spouse. We both used to work a lot (and now I work a lot less, but he still works a lot). But, we weren’t really workaholics, ’cause we never felt guilty about not working when we didn’t want to. We just wanted to work a lot. The kids changed that for me, a lot, and a bit for spouse.
But, I think as a non-workaholic, the problem arises when you decide “the world isn’t going to end” and then end up ordering all our meals in and watching television while eating them. Which is fine, on occasion, but warps your life if you do it all the time.
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100% Agreed. That’s why (deep down) I don’t really want a tenure track job. I enjoy having leisure time.
I spend most of Sunday in my bed reading the annotated edition of Persuasion I got for Xmas over a year ago. Bliss!!
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