Why work?

Life

How do you feel when the alarm clock rings on Monday morning? Do you jump out of bed eager to start another working week? Not likely! Many of us spend 40, 50, 60+ hours a week at work. I am thinking of both paid and unpaid work, work at home and away from home. That’s about half of our waking hours especially if you have travel time. Work is sometimes enjoyable and sometimes satisfying. But sometimes it’s dead boring, sometimes it’s difficult, frustrating and stressful—definitely a health hazard!—and other times it’s so mundane, so insignificant. When I left school I was employed as a ‘gofer’ (a person who ‘goes for’ things) on a building site. My main job was to test concrete. After each pour I placed a sample in a steel cylinder. I had to fill it in 3 layers and prod each layer 25 times with a steel bar. It was so boring. It seemed so mundane. I thought I was going to go crazy! I was glad it only lasted 2 months.

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The rags of time

Life, Sola Panel

No, there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do…

Jim Croce must have had me in mind when he wrote Time in a Bottle. It’s the story of my life—ideas to chase through, books to read, people to see, and letters to reply to. And some day, I promise myself, I’ll learn how to chip and putt. I even have an ‘ideas’ book in which I jot down all the things that I want to do. Reading back through it is a depressing experience. It is a catalogue of unfinished schemes and dreams.

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