The work you love and the work you do
Posted on | November 10, 2007 |
A day to catch up with myself: the boys left early to install soapstone counter tops at the inlaws house. I slept in until after 10 a.m. I’m not sure when I last did that. It felt unbelievably good. I woke up to sun splashed across white flannel and the cat purring and sang in the shower. I had breakfast alone by the woodstove in the dining room, reading Heat and eating bacon, eggs, toast, and a peach-raspberry smoothie, then headed outdoors. I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. The sky was bright blue, and the last golden leaves were floating down. I cleaned the chicken coop, relishing the work.
As I scooped debris from the floor I pondered how within the scope of my life there are different kinds of work. So many of you responded yesterday with job worries, and these resonate with me: with my longing to be doing something else (specifically: writing full time.) It seems as though for so many of us, what we do, and the work we love have become disparate, cleaved out of necessity.
What is the work that you love? For me it is a dozen things: wearing leather gloves and stacking wood; raking leaves; turning soil. It is mowing grass, cutting branches, planting seeds. It is spending six hours back to back writing. It is waking up when the sky is stained pale pink, to scribble in my notebook. It is putting paint on a canvass. And also, some days, it is greeting the faces at the door, eager, curious, exalting. But most days it is my job. The thing that pays the bills. The thing I am good at. The thing I put 100 % of my energy into every day. And yet it doesn’t fill me up the way it used to; my solar plexus is too full with longing, with words that never make it to the page.
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6 Responses to “The work you love and the work you do”
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November 11th, 2007 @ 12:28 am
I am blessed that at the core the work I do is work I love…helping non-profits raise awareness and funds for some of society’s most pressing needs. Sometimes the scales get tipped with too much bureaucracy, too corporate politics, too much stress, just too much of stuff that doesn’t fall in the meaningful category. If I remove the work that pays the bills…
There is the work of love, which is the work I love.
Being a mom to grown adults…
Being a nana to an amazing five-year-old inspiration…
Being creative, for my own enjoyment and for others.
Walking the dog that makes me smile…regardless of the time or day.
Decorating, cleaning, and caring for my home, it’s an extension of me.
November 11th, 2007 @ 9:01 am
Right now my work is being a full-time mama and wife … and it is work that I love. But, inside, deep inside me, there is a screaming Tanya who wants to jump out of this skin and create, grow things, rake leaves, really work physically outside in the elements. My favorite work was when I worked at my step-mother’s greenhouse - I would love to have my own greenhouse and support my family that way. Maybe one day …
November 11th, 2007 @ 1:37 pm
Christina,
have you read Tillie Olsen lately? Particularly “I Stand Here Ironing”? This keeps coming to mind as I read your posts– don’t know if it will be either helpful or supportive or inspiring– but I hope at least one of the three– bisous!
November 11th, 2007 @ 4:18 pm
E–That is one of my favorite pieces. One of the first I heard read aloud in a creative writing course in college. Thanks for reminding me of it!
November 13th, 2007 @ 5:41 am
Teaching is exhausting, never ending work. The pressures we put on teachers to promote maximum learning in the primary grades is out of control. Everyone is leaving exhausted, and it is sad to see children losing parts of their childhood. A couple of years ago I moved to third grade to escape the total immersion required to be a first grade teacher, hoping I would have more energy for my own young children, but truthfully I exchanged ons set of issues for another. However, I still feel like teaching is my passion. I love watching their minds click and sharing new ideas. I love listening to their stories for writer’s workshop and sharing books with them that will change their lives. I’m overwhelmed with feelings of gratitude knowing that because my one autistic student can count money his life will be all the better when he’s out in the world.
Your students are blessed to have such a beautiful, thoughtful, brilliant and creative teacher. I am in awe of you and your multiple talents. I know you’ll find your pot of gold at the end of your rainbow.
November 14th, 2007 @ 7:58 pm
Great collage!
You are blessed with a gorgeous child and a fine eye for details. Working as well means juggling too much. When I was single, teaching was a joy but when I had children it was hard work trying to fit everything in -family, parish, (minister’s wife) school. I only taught for 14 years, then after four months I got bored (kids all at school by then) and I went back to uni. to do Fine Arts and had a superb time.
w.