It’s raining outside as I write this, the soft steady pelt of raindrops, its soft shush interrupted intermittently by thunder’s crackling, gently reminding me to be quiet; and I’m thinking about time, about how little I think I have, about how much of it I fill with work, work, work, and more work, about how little time I allow for nothing, that is, time to simply be.
Mark Slouka’s essay “Quitting the Paint Factory” eloquently elaborates on Thoreau’s famous criticism of the “infinite bustle” many of us find ourselves trapped within:
Today the roads of commerce, paved and smoothed, reach into every nook and cranny of the republic; there is no place apart, no place where we would be shut of the drone of that damnable traffic. Today we, quite literally, live to work. And it hardly matters what kind of work we do; the process justifies the ends. Indeed, at times it seems there is hardly an occupation, however useless or humiliating or downright despicable, that cannot at least in part be redeemed by our obsessive dedication to it…
Most of the work I’m doing right now I enjoy, but I can’t shake off the nagging feeling that I’m sometimes caught in the rush and hustle, and so I imagine myself on a beach building sandcastles and writing stuff in the sand, waiting for the ocean to wash them away; walking in a garden enjoying all the flowers’ tempting scents, the butterflies flitting around; eating a long meal with family and friends; spinning around in the rain, splashing on puddles; dancing with my partner; wrestling with my daughter…
What do you like to do after work, instead of work, or think about instead of your work? What complements your work? How do you balance work and play?
John Madera
John Dermot Woods
Ryan W. Bradley
Michael Leong
Greg Gerke
Stacy Muszynski
A D Jameson
Tim Jones-Yelvington
Rachel Swirsky
Edward Mullany
Aya Karpinska
Paul Kincaid
davis schneiderman
Amber Sparks
Tim Horvath
John Domini
Elaine Castillo
Curtis White
Paula Bomer
James Tadd Adcox
Nick Francis Potter
Brian Kubarycz
Gabriel Blackwell
Janey Smith
Matty Byloos
J/J Hastain
Greg Hunter
Jeff Bursey
Paul Griffin
Chris Lites
John,
These are important questions and issues. For writers, is the work ever cast aside entirely? So much of our “work” is perception–the experience and its afterlives. In a sense, then, perhaps it does not make sense to call it work; just as literature at its best makes the frame shudder at the very least and and slips into the room, the room becomes alive, replete in the way that the best of my reading does. But the “bustle,” I think–this can be evaded, can be transcended from time to time. This I love–the immersion in extratextual things…my daughter’s insistence that “there’s a show.” The other day we purified water through sand, carbon, and gravel, and we kept the bustle at bay.
Also I do a lot of yoga and work at a psych hospital. Long stretches with no printed matter.
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
–Robert Frost
I think this is difficult business, John. I think Tim is right that the work of the writer isn’t really ever “done.”
But I find Big Other to always be a nice respite…
Thanks, Tim and Michael.
When I wrote of how I fill my time with “work, work, work, and more work” I was not talking, necessarily, about writing, about making art (these are optimal experiences), but mainly about the bean-counting, the number-crunching, etc. and the concomitant pressure and worry that come from all of it, and I was also talking about my tendency, as a worker bee, to take on yet another task that will “feed” my writing, my art, take on yet another project that will expand the dialogue, and on and on and on. While this, too, brings me joy, it is, at times, exhausting, and it sometimes actually circumvents my happiness.
I hear you, John. I’ve got way too many projects going on as well.
But it seems like you’ve been an exemplary worker bee — you should be proud of all that you’ve done.