Buddy the Elf vs. The Manager?

In a 2015 Atlantic interview ("'Do What You Love' Is Pernicious Advice") about work and wellness, Atlantic editor Bourree Lam and Miya Tokumitsu, author of the book Do What You Love And Other Lies About Success and Happiness, talk about why we work, and what passion has to do with it. 

Lam: Why do you think people need an excuse to work? Why can’t we just go to work to make money?
Tokumitsu: I have wondered that. And one of the things I want to do is celebrate the job that just pays the rent. I feel like that is so maligned in our present culture.

In a 2016 Fast Company essay (reposted on Medium as "Why Quitting Your Job to Chase Your Dream is a Terrible Idea"), Jeff Goins, author of The Art of Work, advises against leaping for love of work.

"I took the leap." This is the phrase we love to repeat when talking about big success. It's a table of of risk and reward, one we hear constantly from the mouths of wealthy entrepreneurs, big-name movie stars, and successful artists. But it's a lie."

I recently left a job I held for 15 years, often doing what I loved (with excellence, progress, and success) alongside what I didn't like so much. It was one of those mythical "more than a job" jobs. A genuine, murky, motivating vocation tapestry, interweaving business with unmeasurable relationship. (We market Education as such.) Trickling through the journey from entry level to middle management was an undercurrent of Something Else: I wished I had more time and energy to practice what I taught and go along where I lead.

(It happens, not entirely coincidentally, that a few of my friends-who-happened-to-be-colleagues and couple of good friends-outside-of-work are in new chapters of New Job/Life now, too. For each, it's also been the trek of career and work/life shift: new professional occupations demand new education, new kidcare, new geography, new thinking about vocation and paying the rent. If Freelance Empathizers garnered paychecks...)

"Work" is almost always the fulcrum in the balancing act of the circus of life. 

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." - Confucius #Intel #joblove #quote

— Intel (@intel) October 12, 2012

 We know that the platitude "if you love what you're doing, it's not work!" is balderdash, not least because we skim all those "____ is not a talent, it's a skill" and "You have to put in the work to achieve the ___" headlines. But such "work" means effort, not necessarily employment. 

A few months now into my chosen work/life shift, I have no platitudes, and for sure no 17 Steps to Make Work Your New Favorite and Make Your New Favorite Work. I know it's not as simple as Goins' word to go slowly and build a bridge (don't take a leap) to Your Dream Work, nor as Tokumitsu's exercise:

I’ve tried this little experiment when I meet people in non-work situations and try to see how long I can talk to them without asking about their work or have them ask me about my work. It's actually really hard to last longer than four minutes.

(Although, and how!, that one resonates right now.)

I can say that while I work on what I want to do alongside what I don't want so much to do, I also want to do and be well and I know at least one thing: I work most days to build a bridge from my leap to my work and a part of my job right now (which doesn't pay the rent) is to think about what profession means as both avowal and avocation.

In the next couple of weeks, I'll share some of what I'm learning (Learning's my favorite! I just like learning!) about what works in my job of working toward new work.

Wherever you are, may there be music, strangers, ice cream (if you like it), and fat dogs in strollers

When my bus blew a tire last Saturday evening in The Middle Of Nowhere, Connecticut, maybe halfway between a refreshing visit with my friend Heidi in NYC and Boston's South Station, Humanity reared its interesting head.

No one freaked. Everyone seemed to take it in stride, even while we sat for well over an hour on the side of the interstate while CT staties, take-charge passengers, and the inexplicably smiling driver couldn't seem to make any progress in applying our contingency plan. We have a contingency plan, don't we?

No, everyone seemed just to do their own thing. The college kids made immediate friends smoking and swapping stories about bars, while the rest of us wandered or stood around calmly in the field where we'd pulled over.


One passerby pulled over on the side of the highway and ran the quarter mile back to us, entered the bus and asked if a certain person was aboard. No? She went to the back of the bus to check, then ran back to her car and kept driving. Another car pulled over and the driver came to tell us "I have room for three -- I'm going to Boston." My nervous seatmate and two others ran across the field to pile in the stranger's little car, all of us accepting he was a Good Samaritan and not a crazazy freak.


The young couple in the row in front of me -- he in an Israeli Army Reserves shirt, she reading a novel in Hebrew script -- tried to tamp down their curiosity and enthusiasm. I served them, by getting my camera out and snapping away. He grinned and almost seemed to crackle with enjoyment as he, and soon a few others, confidently documented the misadventure.

After awhile, the state police told us all to get back on the bus. They figured 45 minutes of milling about freely on the side of an interstate was enough danger for that time and place.


The driver never told us a thing that was going on, but one passenger took it on himself to give updates so I wasn't confused when we pulled off at the exit and drove slowly and carefully to the Shell Station parking lot where we lived for the next nearly two hours.



The band members riding across the aisle from me eventually got their instruments out, set up by the dumpster and played not particularly inspiring jazz. The very fact they were playing music was great -- but I wondered if their level of talent warranted taking instruments on the bus back and forth from NYC to Boston: did people pay to hear them outside the context of a surreal roadtrip?





I sat on the bus and ran my ipod batteries down. I finished reading "The Year of Magical Thinking." I twittered and photographed our "progress."



And a mechanic arrived to change the big tire, then a new bus from Boston? New York? pulled up, and with no instructions, we all piled on and headed back to the Big B.






I'd gone to New York to see where Heidi's been living on the upper upper west side for six months (last trip I took down we hung out on the lower east side for a few hours and I took another bus right back up, without staying over night). This visit I took the bus down, the subways up, spent the night in her miniature home, and we thrived in good talks and walks through her neighborhood and then midtown the next day.

There are a lot of people in the world. There is a lot of music. There are mishaps, adventures, dogs and dog poop, cell phones, a limited but sufficient supply of patience, and. . .



Life is a highway. It's beautiful when we manage to roll with whatever comes our way: walk our dogs, take our pictures, play our instruments, keep our cools, and accept rides with strangers across state lines.

Bizarro World

Drove downtown this morning to Dallas City Hall Vital Statistics Department to pick up copies of my pa's death certificate for business purposes. It would make a good scene for my novel.

Also spent some time this afternoon pretending I was a cat who thought she was a duck while nephew Daniel was a dog who thought he was a monkey (et al).

When Worlds Collide

Somedays I like to remember the time I was on vacation and saw a cat in a bookstore.

What makes you happy?

Rini: CVS.

Buddy: Plastic bags.

Georgianna: Um. Pass?