I was just rereading this Last Psychiatrist article that this really reminds me of: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/01/randi_zuckerberg.html https://thelas

I was just rereading this Last Psychiatrist article that this really reminds me of: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/01/randi_zuckerberg.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/01/randi_zuckerberg.htm... (Like with all of TLP it meanders a lot and will probably piss you off. It's also highly entertaining!) This is the important bit: > One of our time's great sociological questions is why we filled downtime back up with work, and the reason is it's better than alcoholism. At some point during the Truman Administration home life became more stressful than work life, where stressful is defined either as hysterical drama or rheumatismy boredom, and by Reagan II the home was no longer a respite from modern society's incessant demands to produce or at the very least a place to get a nap. ... > Part of the reason work and home keep mixing despite our professed desires is that that's how Americans were taught to see an aspirational adult life. In every TV show and movie after Leave It To Beaver the gimmick has always been that the protagonist's job and personal life overlap-- doctors in love, CIA agents defending their family, late nights at the office trading zingers or abuse stories. While we no longer think we want the overlap, the shows reinforced the false psychology that a person is something, all the time and everywhere, and the backdrop world "sees" it, accepts it. This applies just as much to negative depictions of work/life overlap, e.g. the obsessed cop whose wife is now divorcing him because of the job: the point isn't that the overlap is "good", that's not the aspiration; the point is that the structure of these depictions represents the fundamental narcissistic fantasy: a fixed and clear identity-- a character-- seen by a potential audience. This is why home is not relaxing: we are working to not let it be all that we are. [emphasis mine]