"My name is ______ and I'm a workaholic."

Does this phrase sound familiar to you? Like in the movies, perhaps? Or probably attending a therapy session like Alcoholic's Anonymous? Your pick.

In the United States, one is authorized to work, starting at the age of 16, in food, retail, hospitality, office, and other service-related fields involved with the general public. When one obtains that very first job, usually in high school, it serves as an important stepping stone and glimpse into the real world.

So let me ask you this: When you got that very first job (assuming you were between the ages of sixteen to twenty-one) was it like being in heaven? Or how about when you received your very first paycheck? Did you felt, in that instant moment, you were the richest person on earth? Regardless of how much it was at the time, did that paycheck give you hope, security, and opportunity for the future? Better yet a time to blow off on that fancy tablet or pair of Jordans you've always dreamed about? Or just needing to splurge on food?

Well you didn't, I assumed, realized that the older you got, BAM reality hit. That special first paycheck of yours made from one of those hourly-wage jobs becomes nothing when daily expenses and major financial obligations are involved.

Those being: this semester's tuition, one month's rent, food, groceries, books, supplies, utilities, gas, insurance, and a buttload of bills that exists on this earth. You realized in that moment, that instant, you gotta work your ass off just to survive through the month before everything gets depleted again (hence, life's vicious cycle).

You start searching for jobs. You get one, a second one, then it becomes a third, fourth, fifth, sixth. Before you know it, you can't even keep track. Hell, you'll end up having more than twenty jobs in a year.

Those monthly earnings you make end up becoming like a grain of dust in the air from paying all those major expenses. Sometimes you end up feeling like a hopeless junkie with nothing to lean on. Long story short, that first paycheck of yours of that time, there's a lot more that meets the eye, or in this case paper.

In today's society, in order to stay afloat and function, work is to be done. That means standing on your feet for 8, 12, and 24 hours of each day until your deathbed arrives. The standard full-time 40 hour work week you know of? It ends up becoming a 50 to a 100 hour work week.

Especially when, in order to achieve your dreams, goals, or any plans you have in the future or even for your kids and family, you realize that you gotta work until you drop. You gotta make that extra dollar in that paycheck no matter what anybody says. That mantra begins chanting in the back of your mind, "Hustle, Hustle, kick it to the curb and hustle your ass off like a true million dollar gangster."

So what should we do? What's the sole purpose of life if all we do is work, get stuck behind that ruthless mundane task of sitting in an office square filing our days away, managing a restaurant, or zip lining through the fields? Should we have set goals in our minds in order to make life and work more enjoyable? Or dread it to the point our deathbed is calling. I say stay positive. Every single things gets better with time. Kick each dollar and penny in that paycheck to the curb. Work it out. Drop the beat. Hustle until you drop.

"Those who work their land will have abundant food, but those who chase fantasies have no sense" -Proverbs 12:11