Your Work Ethic Is Ruining Your Life!
Or so says an article that I read in a magazine while cleaning up the study on the weekend. It described some steps for an Amy Winehouse-style rehabilitation for the ‘workaholism’ you may be experiencing. Something about high expectations, excessive focus on achievement, death of the soul detaching you from reality and cool gear.
The Japanese have a word for it; it’ known as karoshi and it means ‘death from overwork’. I think the Australian version is pre-season and it means ‘that super duper hard yakka run run run ‘til you can’t run any more training that is done in preparation for an impending AFL season’.
In the footballing world, work ethic is everything! So is the attitude you bring with you to the training track every day. Then there is the whole merging and cross-stitching of attitudes and behaviours, and that’s the coaches’ responsibility while the players are sucking in oxygen or vomiting up their breakfast next to the QBE sign just up from the goal posts.
Pre-season training is TOUGH going. It continues to amaze me how many people ask if Brett is still on holidays. Some think he has holidays until the pre-season games begin in February, and others think being a professional footballer means playing one game on the weekend and then getting invited to movie premieres and perfume launches.
Pre-season is TOUGH going…. Oh yeah, I said that…. But so it should be tough, it needs to be. There are 22 plus games of footy to be played and a whole lot on offer. I don’t like to live in the past but two double zero five, people… Uhuh, you got me? Oh what a feeling…
Hayley Kirk
also-known-as-the-other-half
P.S. Although Brett seems to be a dead man walking for the first two weeks, there ain’t any karoshi at our house, just early bedtime.
