Work, Life, and Goofing Off

I like work. I like earning paychecks and having someplace to go and meeting the challenges that come with a job.  I’ve never wanted not to work.

And yet … now I have retired friends. And they’re happy.

I’ve been contemplating work for the past few weeks and asking myself questions about it. Would I be happy if I didn’t work? Would I like endless flexibility to have lunch with friends? Would my house be cleaner if I didn’t work? (The answer to that one is easy: NO.) If I didn’t work, would I finally finish the scarf I’ve been knitting since July? Would I make it to the mountains more often to snowshoe? Would I hang out in the Denver Art Museum on weekday afternoons?

Or would I start wearing pink Snuggies while bonding with the couch and bags of almond M&Ms? Would I rattle around my quiet house, jumping when the phone rang? Would I become intimately acquainted with NetFlix?

The answer to these questions is not clear … except that one about the clean house. I don’t know the answers because I have always worked in some way.  

I came by it honestly. I remember the lectures my dad used to give me about the nobility of work. Frustrated by my lack of desire to clean my bedroom, he’d pontificate about how good it feels to work hard and earn one’s keep. How work brings rewards. How success is the result of hard work.

I thought he was crazy. I was 10 … and 12, 13, etc. Work was tedious; chasing boys and goofing off was fun. But now I’ve turned into my dad.

He was right about the rewards. Last week I got an e-mail from a student. She told me that she’d been in the university for several years and had never had an instructor “who was completely prepared, ready to teach, and quite as caring as [I] have been.” She went on to say that she left my classes excited and fulfilled. All teachers get these kinds of notes – my point is not to self-aggrandize, but to make the point that this note was a better payday than the check I received for teaching that course. It’s the kind of enrichment that is hard to find outside of doing a job that I love, and working hard to do it well.

So I’ll keep working. Honestly, I don’t have a choice unless I want to drastically alter my lifestyle (and I don’t). I still want to pay the light bill, buy groceries, and have money to travel. But I also need to feel like I’m offering something to the world. And to myself. I want the energy and stimulation of doing my best and meeting new challenges. I guess that pink Snuggie is going to have to wait …