When my wife left 20 years ago this month she accused me of being a workaholic, of needing to work like a drug addict needs a fix, and that this was a form of spousal abuse. I denied it at the time and made excuses for my behavior, but she was right. My name is Gary and I'm a workaholic.

I don't want to recover. I like it, even now that I have fully faced my "condition". In a way admitting to myself that it is so was a great relief, a liberating act that allowed my to embrace it heartily and develop it more fully. I've even committed poetry (a crime I never do in public), waxing lyrical about the mental and physical high I get when I've worked long, hard and well. It sharpens my perceptions and awareness, speeds my mind and body, gives me a sense of physical and mental well being that at my age is not otherwise available except in special moments like meditation or good sweaty sex with a willing and uncritical wench who doesn't give a fig about my condition or how I spend my days except to be glad that I'm energetic and long winded, however I keep myself in good working order.

It's a social problem though. Today I blew off a meeting in town so that I could spend all day in mortal combat with invasive black berry bushes. I was going to go, but for an hour or so I fidgeted getting ready, feeling tired, sore and headachey, thinking maybe that I was getting the flu or something. Then after I blew it off and went to work I felt great! My soreness melted out of my muscles as I worked, my vision cleared and sharpened as did my mind. The day was glorious, an "Indian summer" day with that special quality of light that comes from a clear sky and a sun low in the south even at noon, the kind of light that cameras never capture and that artists spend lifetimes trying to simulate in paint on flat surfaces (failing, in my view). The combination of a glorious day and my heightened perceptions was almost overwhelming at times, too beautiful to look at directly or think about too long without trancing out for a while, waking with a start wondering how much time had elapsed while it stood still for me.

I like to be alone at these times. Animals are OK. They get it. They live there all the time and we just wink at one another and keep the secret. Other people think I'm suffering, laboring mightily and even bleeding from a few spots where the berries fought back, little suspecting that I've transported to another dimension or something where animals talk, and wink knowingly, and few humans ever venture, at least in my presence or that speak of it openly.

Oddly, women seem to get it more than other men. That may be a skewed perception resulting from the slice of humanity I know personally. There have been times when a woman I'm seeing shows up while I'm in the zone and she seems like another animal, an adept who knows where I am and why, and we commune in a way that is not often available to us. Same woman, different time, no connection. She's the same, but I'm different. It brings to mind fragments of remembered readings about women being more sensitive, literally. A man, by comparison, is always wearing a body glove which dulls and softens sensation except in a few notable spots. When I'm high the gloves come off and I engage with the world naked in body, mind and soul.

It is addictive. I am addicted. I'm going to do it again tomorrow. Every tomorrow.