Must Have Something in my Roots

My name is Mia and I am a workaholic.

Several people in my family suffer from "Workaholism." Workaholism is the compulsion to work a lot and/or hold several jobs, positions, hustles whether you need to or not.

It originates with my father. I was really young when my Dad was alive so I don't remember all of his hustles but I do remember one of them being a tow truck driver. Daddy always did whatever he had to legally do to keep us above water. But workaholism is not necessarily genetic because my siblings and I don't have the same Dad yet they are clearly workaholics too.

My oldest brother might be the worst offender. He is a regional sales manager for TWO companies. And how he does it amazes me. He works out of the house and has 2 company cars, 3 company computers and just 1 cell phone (cause he said keeping track of 2 would be too much). In addition to 2 full time hustles he also has 2 part time hustles. He drives nurses around (home nursing service) and has a business with one of his friends where he cleans offices. And like that isn't enough to occupy his time he also coaches kids in basketball all year long.

My next brother just has a full-time job and one part-time hustle. He has always been the one in our family known as being a "Jew." No offense to Jews but if anyone can make a dollar out of fifteen cents, it's this brother. His ridiculous methods of cheapness has been fodder for family and friends for years.

And then there is me. All my life I have watched the people in my family hustle and the hustle bug finally bit me in high school. In addition to school and all those extracurriculars I worked part-time at a law firm and I hustled condoms at school. That's right...condoms. Back in my high school days people were too "scared" to go out and buy condoms. But I had a friend that worked at CVS and he would steal or get a discount on large quantities of condoms. He was my supplier. I would sell the condoms at school. My best days were Fridays. Everyone wanted condoms for the weekend. It was so ridiculous...all they had to do was go buy them themselves...but whatever...helped to pay my pager bill.

Growing up I always told myself I'm going to go to college so I can have just one job to pay the bills and not have to hustle. In college there were times where I had FOUR jobs. After college I can only think of a few years where I didn't hold down a full-time job and at least one hustle. Then I moved back to NYC. Why oh why did I do that? NYC is the hustler capital. There are so many opportunities here it's hard to not fall in to some kind of hustle.

When I moved back last year I was at the New York Times for about 3 months before I acquired a hustle...interning for Forbes magazine. That hustle came to an end and I was feening for my next hustle like a crackhead looking for their next hit. I switched up jobs completely and told myself, no more hustles. But in a few short months I had found my next hustle...hosting speed dating events.

Fast forward to today and I just acquired another hustle. I'll be working part-time for a company ALL journalists should know...mediabistro.com.

I suffer from workaholism not because I'm greedy. My workaholism is a by-product of debt. I just don't want to be in debt and hustling gets me extra money to pay off debt. My workaholism is also out of necessity. You can't imagine what it is like to have a mortgage in Atlanta and an apt in NYC. The housing market is so bad I just can't unload the house. And it's hard to keep a tenant in my place when this is a buyer's market. So my options are to either pay the mortgage every month or jack up my credit. I'd rather work 12 jobs and never sleep than jack up my credit because credit is easy to mess up and hard as hell to fix.

I have a financial goal in mind and as long as I keep my eyes on the prize and stay focused on my focus my workaholism will only be used for good and not evil purposes.