On Loving Work

 

I’m not a workaholic, for I can relax and be away from work without becoming anxious. But I do love to work. Intellectual and emotional labor is what my current job entails. I’m a well-trained listener and invite people to share details, stories, and memories of their lives. I notice patterns, phrases, and perhaps most often, what’s absent from speech but somehow here between us. That’s where I gently probe. My career requires concentration, presence, and effort, but it doesn’t exhaust me and is never boring.

I need physical work to be happy as well. My favorite vacations are visits with people who need my help with some project, or travel to beautiful places where I can hike each day. Walking the Camino de Santiago was sublime pleasure for me. I prefer having a destination when I walk.

Work provides purpose, which keeps the life force moving through me. I have noticed that people who retire without a project often turn their health into their life’s purpose. Couples with nothing new to create once the family is raised have a harder time staying together.

As I descended to the basement for a second time this morning, I realized that this kind of physical effort to clean, replenish supplies, and release what no longer serves is what connects me to humans throughout time.

Our ancient connection to the actual work of staying alive played a big part in my love of camping: making a shelter, building a fire, cooking food and cleaning up to prevent animal encroachment feels primal and satisfying. Resting in that deep lap of time brings comfort.

It’s always seemed ironic that the work of tending bodies and souls of children, the old, and the ill pays the lowest wages in this society, whereas abstract work with money, paper, and numbers pays so highly. I’ve come to believe that the intrinsic reward of work that has immediate value offsets the low wage while work that has been made up and doesn’t serve people in a tangible way requires more monetary reward to justify itself. It's  not just but it makes a perverted sense.

Since the start of the pandemic, many people have devoted additional labor to their yards and houses. Now that we are spending more time at home, why not make it completely functional, even beautiful?  The privilege of this work is not lost on me: too many Americans are unhoused, and encampments in parks have highlighted the crisis we face and must resolve.

We have collective work ahead of us. Establishing practices, policies, attitudes, and systems that don’t let anyone fall through the cracks will call upon all our talents, energies, and ancient knowledge. Such work can renew our sense of purpose, connection, and joy. 

I’m ready.

What does writing want of me?

 

Now that I feel some space to breathe, I'm curious what new project I might undertake in this coming retreat-like winter. 

I asked a question--What does writing want of me?--listened, and  wrote. I hope you do the same in whatever form your creative energy wants to dance.

My writing is a lean and sinewy older woman, tanned from living mostly outdoors, with hands that are strong, nimble and capable of healing. This writing/woman has long grey hair in a braid, and she wears jeans and turtlenecks but can put on pearls for special occasions.

What does writing want of me?

Writing wants to be a daily presence in my life because she thinks of herself as my friend, and the more frequently we talk, the better we know each other, and the deeper we can go.

Writing wants a regular time with me. It doesn’t have to be long, or always at the same time. It needn’t be formal or at the computer or a desk, but it does need to be daily because she gets scared and shy when I don’t show up to listen.

Writing wants to be trusted. She wants to take the lead and know that I’m willing to follow, that I’ll let my imagination go and sometimes write a paragraph of fiction.

Writing wants to be in the process and the mix without criticism every step of the way. She knows there’s a time for winnowing and weeding, editing and revising, but most of the time she wants to be trusted, unfettered, and allowed to run.

Writing wants to be well fed. She knows that sometimes I want to check out and just read a good story that makes me turn the page, but she also wants slow food, some poetry, something to sink her teeth into and ponder, language that takes her breath away.

Writing wants not just the message but the way it’s expressed to matter.  She knows that happens late in the process, but she gets sad when I never return to these pieces to polish them and put them out there. She’d love to be in the world more than she is.  It’s those occasions when she puts on her silk and pearls and is admired for looking good as well as being wise.

Writing also doesn’t want to be lonely--she wants to nestle next to others, to be held and thought about in a circle of writers.