A Good Suckiness: Thoughts on the Nature of Work

{ January 23rd, 2008 }

I personally think that work is a very good thing. When I really think about it, it just seems like humanity is designed to be productive. We are made to make. We are partial to production. Wired for work. And yet there is another fact that seems to stand in stark contrast this - work sucks. It can be boring, annoying, frustrating, unforgiving, time consuming, stressful, draining, and unfulfilling. In other words, work as a concept seems good, but work in practice is lame. Work is the good suckiness.

I mean how many people do you know who would still go into their jobs everyday if they didn’t have to make the money to survive, or buy little Timmy braces, or Peggy Sue a Jetta, or Tiberius a legion? I certainly wouldn’t. I go do something else that would seem more fun. Only after a long period of initial ‘relaxing’ - where I’d watch marathon after marathon of Law & Order, Walker Texas Ranger, The Gummy Bears, and Fraggle Rock, relive my childhood by listening to George Harrison’s “I Got My Mind Set On You” time after time, and slept like a madman - only then would I probably tire of that pointless existence and start trying to do something that would actually matter.

If I really had my choice, I would just be a dad. I mean that seems like the best ‘job’ in the entire world to me. You get another chance to love someone unconditionally, and for the most part it is relatively easy to do so. You get to see your child grow into a human being, with a personality all their own. You get to see your child’s mind develop and learn how they think and why they think that way. Everything you do can make a positive and lasting impact on the rest of your child’s life. It will be such an adventure to be a dad.

But part of being a dad is also about providing for the needs of your family, and in my case I will probably experience the cost of fatherhood as well as the joy. If I do not work, my family will not eat. There are no professional fathers. I won’t get paid millions of dollars, or be in any commercials, or make it on any sexiest-man-alive lists by making sure my child’s life is filled with love. So I must work at something other than what I’d ideally like to do in order to make what I really want to do a reality. I think I can handle that. Being a good dad is enough motivation to want to work at something I don’t see as an ultimate good. In fact, I think it is enough for me to even like the sucky job I have, given enough time.

Here are the things I am trying to consciously think to break past the lameness of labor and help make my work more fulfilling:

My family can’t eat if I don’t earn. I want to express my love for my family by giving of myself for the sake of their well being. My working is ultimately an expression of love for my family - and boy do I love my wife!
My family can’t grow if I don’t increase my earning power. It costs money to feed two people. I imagine it costs much more to feed eight. If I can’t earn more money then I can’t feed more people. I can work hard and develop my marketable skills in order to make myself more useful to my employer, increasing the amount of money they give me.
Work is good in theory so work on making the theory a reality. There are different things I could do to accomplish this: change jobs, focus on what I like about my job, ask for more tasks doing things that I enjoy, get training on something I like, etc. The most important thing for me right now in this area is probably learning to focus on the aspects of my job I really like and try to grow in the areas that I don’t. I think that if I abandon my current job now I will loose a quality opportunity at a quality company to learn about what it means to persevere when things are not always enjoyable.

I’d love to hear anyone else’s strategies or ideas for dealing with work. Got comment?

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