Learning to Love What I Do

Even though I consider myself in transition, I like my current position, even have goals that I wish to meet before I move on. Two years ago I wouldn’t have said this. But then someone pointed me in the direction of a tiny chapter in a book called Zen and the Art of Making a Living by Laurence G. Boldt. The Chapter is entitled “Loving What You Do (‘Til You Are Doing What You Love)”. A couple of years ago, I had quit-fantasies several times a week. Work was agony. Just seeing the title of this little chapter sent me spinning. I didn’t want to read it for fear that I might actually start liking what I do for a living. If I start to like what I do, then I might never make a change. If I start to love it, well, what kind of trap was this guy setting at the end of 600 pages of exciting possibility? The very idea of loving my current employment appalled me. I could not even contemplate doing it until my retirement date (2030!). Inconceivable. Unthinkable. Unacceptable.
“Forget it,” I said. “I will not love my work. I want to write!”
“Just read the chapter,” my friend said.

Here’s what Boldt says: “You will have far more success if you view your new work as something you are working toward, than if you view your old work as something to get away from.” His main idea is that frustration with a career is itself draining. It’s true. A lot of people complain in my (any?) workplace. I don’t enjoy being around those people unless I chime in with my own grievances. And then participating in the ever-expanding list of woes makes me feel doubly put upon and burdened. Boldt says to take that energy-sapping frustration and channel it into “making the greatest contribution you can through your current work.”

He recommends stepping back and seeing what does work in your work. What’s the value in it? How can you make a contribution? This was a useful exercise. First of all, lots of people would say that being a philosophy professor at a research-intensive (read: light teaching load) institution is an enviable gig. When I was an undergraduate, I sure thought this. All those people who keep asking me what I am going to do with my “summer off” sure think this. The friends who like to ask “how many hours a week do you teach?” look positively green when I say “six” or, as it happens this coming semester, “three.” I reflected upon the aspects of the career that I do enjoy and that have value. Contact with the students, for example. I can really make a difference there if I value what I am doing instead of treating it as a burden. Research. I want to be a writer for goodness sake, and writing is a job requirement, a full 40% of what I am paid to do. As I made progress, the little whining voice sometimes jumped in: “Yes, but I want to be a creative writer. Scholarly writing is b-o-r-i-n-g.” Nevertheless, I definitely made headway.

Slowly, slowly, my interest in my work has been re-kindled. I am not dreading September this year. I’m looking forward to my teaching. I have a new research project on the go that excites me. And I am pushing ahead with my MFA in Creative Writing, which I consider to be re-training of the most enjoyable kind. That desperate need to get out of my career has subsided, even though I remain clear in my mind that I will be moving on to other things within the next five to ten years. Boldt is right: “loving what you do will give you the confidence you need to do what you love.”