On Work

What does it ‘work’ mean in our culture? Looking in the Thesaurus - there is quite a range of synonyms: from the fairly benign “effort, endeavor, task, attempt” to significantly negative “grind, servitude, slogging, toil.”

It seems that over the past few decades ‘work’ in the popular media has become rather narrowly focused on activity associated with earning money. There is a lot of discussion of ‘work-life balance’ as if work and life are two distinct things.  Does that phrase imply that work is the same as servitude or non-discretionary activity?  Our work time belongs to someone else (our employer) rather than ourselves?  Perhaps we have some discretion when we choose a job or career…but that does not mean that we like every aspect of the ‘work’ even though some career counseling seems to imply that young people should strive to steer themselves into occupations that they can enjoy 100% of the time.

Then again - years ago my daughter’s Montessori pre-school called the activities in their school ‘work’ which associates the word with effort or endeavor or attempt.  This is a more appealing way to think about ‘work’ and one that could apply to anyone. It does not conceptualize ‘work’ as separate from the rest of what the individual is about.

I like to integrate all aspects of my life rather than try to balance particular categorizations of what I do.  I still like to have variety in my days, weeks, and months but it is not about work-life balance; it is more about having an enjoyable mix of things I am doing. I’ve come to realize that if I take earning money out of the equation, I am hard pressed to identify what activities I would categorize as ‘work.’ 

Ten Days of Little Celebrations - March 2014

Over a year ago I posted about finding something to celebrate each day. It’s an easy thing for me to do and the habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. This month has been full of ‘little celebrations;’ here are my top 10 for March 2014.

STEM Fair - These spring events used to be called ‘Science Fair’ but the fair has enlarged to include Science - Technology - Engineering - and Math so they have changed the name. I have volunteered as a judge for our county fair for the past 10 years or so. It seems like every year is an improvement over previous years and this year there was a bigger improvement than usual! This year the middle school students were much more articulate about the statistics they were using (standard deviation in particular).

Great snowflake pictures - Some years we get snow in March and sometimes we don’t. This year not only did we get a good snow, the situation was ideal of snowflake photography. Of course, I celebrated with snow ice cream!

Raisins soaked in apricot brandy - I plumped some dried out raisins with apricot brandy for an apple - raisin - celery salad. Yummy! I may do this every time I make the salad from now on. Little culinary successes are always worth celebrating.

Volunteer naturalist classes - Last fall had did most of my prep for becoming a volunteer naturalist by shadowing people that had done it before; this spring I am taking the classes and enjoying them tremendously. I even won the drawing for the book give away - Bringing Nature Home by Douglas W. Tallamy. Wahoo!

Philadelphia buildings - I had a hard time choosing between the Philadelphia Flower Show itself and discovering the interesting buildings of downtown Philadelphia which will probably be the focus for my next foray into the city. Either way - the March day trip to Philadelphia was a daylong celebration.

The last two volcano lectures - I worked my way through a series of online lectures on material science related to volcanoes that stretched my memory of chemistry (from classes about 40 years ago) and was thrilled to get to the last two lectures that focused on how lab work is done with silicate glass and how all the research and field work gets translated onto geologic maps.

A clean car - With all the snow, my car became thoroughly encrusted with salt. Its shiny clean look coming out of the car wash was worth celebrating.

Lots of feathers - It was a little disconcerting to find a pile of feathers beside our house but then I realized that the presence of a predator was an indicator of a working ecosystem in our neighborhood….and  I enjoyed having the feathers for a photography project.

Pot luck lunch - I have always liked pot luck events. Sometimes there is a skew to desserts but this one had great variety. If anything, it was skewed toward fancy salads.

Work experiences to pass along - One day I was able to pass along two potential solutions to my daughter from my career: 1) Hotel too expensive for a conference? Room with someone. 2) Logo shirt required for an outreach event way too big to tuck into slacks? Wear it tucked into a skirt or belted like a short dress over leggings or skinny slacks. It’s worth celebrating any time lessons learned long ago are still relevant!