It was 2:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning when we finally wrapped up the inventory audit. A new store, already in disarray. A manager hiding more than poor performance. Three employees in tow, every box counted, every adjustment logged.
I should have gone back to the hotel for a decent night’s sleep. I should have come home later in the day, rested and sane. But — and I’m not making this up — I wanted to make it home in time to attend church with my family. Plus, we had a new baby at home, and I had already been gone too long.
My three bleary-eyed companions rolled out of their rooms — none of us having slept more than a few hours — and at 5:00 a.m., I was behind the wheel.
We stopped at a convenience store. I grabbed two cans of my go-to energy drink: Superman. I knew plenty about it — how conceptually bad it was for me. I’d been drinking them for months, always while in motion. I knew the 16-ounce can was a powerhouse of energy. I downed the first one in the parking lot. Cracked the second one before I even started driving.
Each can had about 200mg of caffeine. I drank both in under thirty minutes.
By the time we reached home hours later, my heart was racing. I was sweating, shaking, feeling like I needed to sprint a marathon or have a heart attack. The caffeine and other stimulants, without the buffer of constant movement, hit me like a truck.
I missed my family — they were gone before I got home. I missed church. I sat on the bathroom floor for nearly an hour, trembling, sweating, trying to bring my body back from whatever I’d just done to it. And somewhere in the middle of it, I realized something: I had long since crossed the line between commitment and compulsion. What started as responsibility had twisted into something else.
This was just dumb. Downright stupid.
I walked into my boss’s office the next day and said the schedule was going to change, or I was done. We were working 20-hour days. I wish I were making that up. That went on for fifteen weeks. It wasn’t a badge of honor. It was malpractice.
Unfortunately, I have to be honest — the absurd imbalance wasn’t just a company problem. It was me. I let it settle into my bones and take over. I convinced myself I was doing the right thing — that because I was a salaried employee, the company somehow had claim on my time that way. I also believed in working hard, being reliable, showing up no matter the cost.
I called it integrity.
But it wasn’t.
What I allowed — what I’ve allowed, time and again — was something closer to workaholism dressed up as devotion. Hero complex. Proving myself. Taking pride in being the last one standing. The one who fixes everything. All the time.
This, perhaps, is one of the hardest realizations I’ve had on this journey so far: that’s not integrity. That’s ego.
I used to believe that to have character meant never letting up. But the pressure and the pace didn’t keep me ahead — they just frayed everything at once. Deadlines, sleep, relationships, clarity — each thread pulled tighter until things started to unravel. Fast.
I repeated the lifeless mantra to myself that I was doing it because I was providing for my family. But my family barely saw me.
And I’ve done this more than once. In other jobs. In other seasons. It creeps in slowly — the belief that showing up for work in extreme ways is the same as showing up for people in real ways. That if I just push hard enough and long enough, I can make everything better.
But work doesn’t love you back.
Never has. Never will.
I don’t know when I forgot that real integrity isn’t about proving your value by what you can endure. Real integrity is being honest about what you can’t. It’s not about arriving early and staying late out of loyalty — it’s about having the courage to say, “This is too much,” before your body or your family says it for you.
That moment on the bathroom floor didn’t make me a martyr — even though I walked into my boss’s office with the self-righteous air of a misguided one. It made me a man who needed to make some different choices.
I still wrestle with it. All the time. I still tell myself I’ll slow down next week. I still have days where I chase exhaustion like it’s a virtue.
Little by little, I’m learning that saying no doesn’t mean I’m less reliable. In fact, saying no — the few times I’ve said it — has already shown me I can be more reliable.
I’m trying to practice a version of integrity that includes letting myself rest. That includes my health. That includes my wife and my kids.
That tells the truth about what it costs to be the guy who never says no.
The canyon I’m climbing out of wasn’t made by hours and deadlines. I made it. I carved it myself through years of thinking that my worth was tied to how hard I work. And, weirdly, that integrity meant always saying yes.
But I’m trying something different now.
I’m trying to show up in my life the way I say I will in my values.
And I don’t need a Superman to do that.
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