Life Your Work

Life is work. There. I said it. I don’t mean that life is putting in 18 hour days slaving at a job that repulses you to make money. I mean that living life, day to day, is work. It takes effort. It takes energy to get out of bed. Scheduling your social activities requires your attention. Raising your children is a challenge. Cleaning the dishes. Walking the dog. Breathing.

When we separate our lives into boxes and identify one activity as “work” and another as “play” we are living a dangerous lie. You may differentiate work and play by highlighting that what you do for work is done for a wage, for an employer, for someone else. Play might be something that you do for yourself, for fun. This is at the crux of the matter. When you work for money you are exerting effort to earn what you need to support your family, your life, yourself. When you work you are actually doing it for yourself. Yes, it may be true that you have chosen to spend your time working for an employer who uses your labor and your ideas to make a profit. Did you see it? The word in that sentence? You have made a choice to sacrifice your time and labor for an agreed upon price. You have chosen to work to live.

But work isn’t fun. Why not? If what you define as work doesn’t get you excited, doesn’t entertain you, doesn’t engage you, why do you choose to do it? Why not do something else that you love, that you can put your energy into? Why not do something that you refuse to call “work” because you enjoy it so much? Let’s be clear. Life is work. It takes a lot of investigation, self-analysis and energy to find The Thing. It may take a day, a month, a year or more to find it. Isn’t it worth investing in yourself instead of choosing to spend the rest of your life working? Is that even a choice?

Try something. Write a list of the top 5 things you spend your time doing that you don’t think of as work. As an example, here is my list:

1. Spending time with my family
2. Cutting trees
3. Finding ways to help people, increasing effectiveness
4. Learning, reading, writing
5. Photography

Now, why not exert some energy and choose to do something that makes life your work?

– Article by James Flawith

Andrea Butterworth is the owner of Dyggz M James Flawith, husband, father, worker,  is an arborist at Precision Tree Services Ltd, and the Designer of Lil Worker Safety Gear.