The Fixaholic
I wake up to a light ploink ploink sound on Saturday morning. When I walk down the stairs to the basement, I see my daughter throwing medium size screws, one by one, into an empty laundry basket. My husband is measuring wood for his latest project - building a shoe rack. Guilt is dripping from his face. “She started playing here and then I thought I could take some measures. I didn’t mean to work on it, really”. I wasn’t mad at all, even if he had put her here for him to finish up some work. She seemed very content with her self-improvised game. But I had to hold in a comment about the odds of her walking randomly to the basement.
My husband is a fixaholic, for lack of better word. He loves designing, building, and creating. And he is very good at it. But it almost comes as an obsession. He needs to have a handyman project, otherwise he will get itchy. I could write a list longer than this blog of the projects he has completed in our house. House automation (we have 150+ switches in our house while every light or shade is voice operated), a shelf over our washer and dryers, a drying rack that can be pulled up and down, toddler gates, a massive Halloween spider, a weather station on the roof, a security system with three cameras in the carport alone. He is currently designing a sauna for our backyard.
When he starts a project, there is no point in interrupting him. Multiple trips are made to the Canadian Tire, Rona, or Home Depot to pick up tools, more wood, or other materials. And those trips, as well as the work, have to happen now. Absolutely now. It can’t wait. When my husband split his eyebrow instead of the plywood for the spider Halloween decoration, I dropped him off at the ER while he sighed: “I hope this won’t take too long, I really need to get at least another two hours to get it done”. He hopped on the ladder onto the roof with his stitched up face a minute after an Uber dropped him off. He got it done.
For someone studying workaholism for more than a decade, it isn’t hard to see the parallels. My husband has an internal – borderline obsessive – drive to work on handyman projects. Once on a project, he can’t disengage from the project. Only the project matters. There is almost a feverish need to finish it, and he is restless when he can’t work on it. This is exactly what workaholism is: an internal compulsive drive to work hard. Workaholics find it difficult to switch off from work, let work bleed over to or interfere with other life domains, and they feel restless when they can’t work. Now, my husband has a more than full-time job, so he can’t really get into handyman projects to the extent that it would be unhealthy. But workaholics can. If they keep going with their compulsion, they will burn out or develop physical ailments at some point (see here for the research). Because every body needs a rest at some point.
During my daughter’s nap time, my husband picks up more wood (told you this would happen), with one of the boys. He saws, glues, and builds in the afternoon while our oldest helps now and then, and sometimes takes a tv break. This continues when I leave with our daughter for a birthday party. When we come home, the shelves are finished, and all shoes are neatly lined up in seven rows on the wall. I have to give it to him, it looks amazing, and it is super functional. In the evening, once the kids are in bed, I ask him how he feels. I’m just curious if there is a sense of peace now. But he is staring at his phone, so I have to repeat the question. “Ehm, yah, I’m happy with the shoe rack. But I’m actually looking at saunas now. You know we could use the electric circuit from the hot tub (…)”. Right. On to the next project. It is good that there are only two days in a weekend because I would be seriously concerned about my husband’s health if he could do this seven days a week.
