Love of the work

My partner has often stated that I love my work more than I love her. I am embarrassed to admit this, but she’s right.

Let me explain:

To me, my work is not just something I do. I don’t just do it to pay the bills – though it does. It is part of who I am, and not just in a curriculum vitae sense. I write. I’ve always done so. Even if I become blind or lose my typing hands in an accident, I know I’ll find a way to keep writing. It’s who I am. So you could say that my work is just as part of my identity as my nationality, gender, and dysfunctions. Writing seeps into everything I am and everything I do that there is no way for me to compartmentalize it as “just my job”. Since it’s part of me, it is hard to love anything else more than writing.

This is why my partner says that I love my work more than I love her. It’s not a complaint, but a statement of fact. Most of the time, I choose to finish a sentence or make the most out of a burst of inspiration rather than listen to a joke she wants to share. I am not being cold-hearted.1 I am just being Celine. It’s like what they tell you just as the plane is about to take off: wear your oxygen mask first before you assist someone else.

So yes, I love my work that much. Because I love myself.

Things weren’t always this ideal, though. While I was in college I had to spend hours each day writing descriptions of sex toys and articles on loans. I had to support myself and my family at a relatively early age so I took every job I could get my hands on, my personal fulfillment be damned. I certainly didn’t love that. I enjoyed it to some extent, telling myself that at least it was writing, but it wasn’t the kind of writing I really wanted to do.

This is why I realize that I am very, very lucky that I can now say “yes” only to projects I want to work on, that I spend my time working on the quality of every piece I put out there even if I’m not always satisfied or successful. I am aware that it’s not a common or easy thing to find the work you love and to act on that love every day, but if you have the power to make it happen then you’d be crazy to let the opportunity slip away.

Work as Identity

Recently I’ve been hearing a lot of disdain for using one’s job description as a life description. This feeling is only relevant if you don’t like your job, but if you like your job enough to call it your work – a crucial thing you do that enables you to thrive – then you wouldn’t mind being labeled as a writer, programmer, plumber, or architect.2 The sound of that label may be as familiar to you as your own name because your work is now part of your sense of self.

It doesn’t help that writing or making comics or painting or any other creative endeavor doesn’t have a strict process. It just bleeds into your day like breathing. You don’t always know when you’re done for the day and you also don’t know when you’re creating. For me, reading is an essential part of writing even if I’m doing it leisurely. I get quite a few ideas from just talking to friends, so casual conversation is part of it too. Then it follows that sleeping is also part of writing, since I often find myself waking up with razor-sharp focus to write something very specific.

Here’s where it gets tricky, for me at least: if you love your work enough to make it part of your identity, you can be a little touchy when people are mocking it. I don’t mean nasty troll comments left on my blog posts, or an editor’s criticisms on my latest article. I mean when people get this look, have this tone, and they say something like “What? That’s what you do with your time?” This is often followed by “Do you even have a social life now?” or “I bet there’s not much money/stability/credibility in that.”

Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you – except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them, nothing, not even a sound they can recognize.

-Ayn Rand, “The Fountainhead”

And you know what, it hurts. Especially when it comes from people you love and respect. Not everybody realizes that some people can have such a personal connection to their work, mostly because it’s a rare thing. It’s easy to be self-deprecating about being an accountant if you don’t like being an accountant, or to tell others to switch careers for “stability” if you feel no instinctive connection to your own career. I used to get so easily defensive or angry about this, but I think it’s time for a new approach.

If your work is as precious to you as your most cherished memory, then treat it with the intimacy and sincerity it deserves. Leave it unmentioned in company where you know it won’t be understood, but keep it open among those people who know what it’s like to pursue their passion daily. It doesn’t matter if you’re pursuing different fields, but at least you’re with someone who knows.

But if you suspect your friends will sneer or give you career “advice” contradictory to the spirit of what you do, then just go ahead and say “Nah, my work is too boring, you don’t want to hear about it.” Trust me, it’s better for both of you. That way, you can still have a pleasant dinner conversation and no one has to down five glasses of wine just to keep sane.

I may love my partner with all my heart, but she’s an entity that’s completely separate from me – no matter how often we’re together. My work isn’t like that. My work is who I am.

  1. It’s a different story if, say, she were sick or on fire. I would not hold my hand up like some asshole and say “Wait, lemme just finish this sentence…” In this article, I am referring to choosing within the “Not Urgent” choices I have to make re: my partner’s needs. (That’s QII and QIV for you die-hard Covey fans.)
  2. Unless you have value judgments attached to those labels. Some people have trouble calling themselves “artists” because they feel like what they make isn’t art yet, it’s just practice.

Image illustrated by Celine

19 May 2010  Leave a comment

The Treachery of Labels: What You Call Yourself vs. What You Really Do

This is not a coat rack.1

But it is, isn’t it? It’s supposed to be my easel, but right now I use it to hold a couple of jackets. Ergo, it’s a coat rack. It’s never going to be an easel until I use it to hold a canvas. By applying this level of honesty to the other objects lying around my house, here’s what I’ve come up with:

  • Electric guitar and amplifier – Remnants of my time with a band in high school, currently hogger of valuable cabinet space.
  • Baseball bat – Object that gives me fake courage and confidence to ward off burglars when I’m alone at night. (Not guaranteed to fight off actual burglars.)
  • Old analog v8 video camera – Also hogger of space.

Now, applying this to myself: I am not a painter. Unless I’m actually painting every single day, making it my work, then I am not a painter. I’m just some hobbyist who paints if/when time/money/desire allows it. I know this, that’s why I never call myself a painter.2 I do call myself a cartoonist because I doodle almost every day and most of my doodles are cartoons or comics. Also, with full confidence, I can tell you I’m a writer.

Many people find labels limiting, but I actually take comfort in them. They remind me of who I am. At the same time, though, I don’t grab a label I like and call myself that. It works the other way around. I go about my day doing the things I want to do. At the end of the day I look at what I’ve spent my time and energy on and that’s who I am. That’s what I do. Almost every time, the answer is the same – it’s writing. Drawing cartoons comes a close second.3

I am a writer. I also draw cartoons.

But surely labeling yourself is superficial… we are not our jobs!

If we’re not what we do, what we think, and what we say, then who are we? These labels are not imposed limits, they merely reflect what you’re already doing. Owning up to that and trying to compare what we think we do to what we actually do helps get rid of the delusions.

How many people say things like “I’m not really an accountant.4 That’s just my day job. My real passion is writing.” Out of those people how many of them actually spend time on their “real passion”? If you spend 10 hours a day doing accounting work, and 15 minutes facing a blank screen because of your “writer’s block”, then you’re really just an accountant with delusions of writing. If you want to be a writer, write goddammit.

Yes, I’m being harsh. But in case you haven’t noticed (the number of comments are a hint), this blog is really just me talking to myself. I have to keep myself in check and own up to what I spend my time on, own up to who I really am.

I am a writer. I also draw cartoons.

Thank goodness for that. Now, to fine-tune this a bit, I’d like to add the word “fiction” before the word “writer”. And there’s only one way to do that without deluding myself.

Write more fiction.

  1. With apologies to Réne Magritte.
  2. In some cultures, a painter is someone who paints houses and the like. If that’s the case then I am a painter once in a while.
  3. I didn’t know this yet when I wrote this post. Now that I’m more ruthless with cutting out procrastination, the truth emerges.
  4. With apologies to accountants who love their job.

23 October 2009  Leave a comment

True Productivity: It Has to Come From You

This is Part 2 of my series on true productivity. Part 1, True Productivity Leaves Less Time for Talk, can be found here

There are two types of productivity apps: those that block out distractions from work and those that encourage work. Examples of the former are web site blockers (such as Leechblock) and application blockers (such as DoNotDisturb). As for the apps that encourage work, they’re the tools that allow you to work faster and better. For me that includes Texter and Google Docs. In the past years that I’ve been experimenting with almost every productivity app ever released, I’ve realized one thing – the distraction blockers don’t work in the long run.

Let me clarify: if an app blocks out things you can’t control such as noisy neighbors and needy cats, then it’s useful. But if it’s blocking out something that’s within your control like, say, checking your email or looking at Facebook updates for the umpteenth time, then the app is nothing more than a cosmetic. It’s like sticking a Band-Aid on your melanoma and telling yourself that it’s cured.

Apps can be disabled, programmed, and uninstalled. The same goes with the manual tweaks you do to “block” distractions, such as tinkering with the hosts file and whatnot.

“Oh, but they make it difficult for you to disable Leechblock.”

Yeah, but would you really want a solution that is dependent only on the fact that someone pressed the “Enable” button? What if you’re working on somebody else’s computer? What if you’re so desperate to check your email yet again that you find a way to disable your site blockers “just this one time”? Then you realize that you’ve done it so many times that your “productivity tool” is actually making you unproductive at being unproductive.

Hey, I’m not judging. I used to do that a lot. And now I feel stupid about it.

Painting the Office

In the past month, we’ve been redecorating our home office. We were already overwhelmed with work and rarely had a spare moment to attend to this project. Ergo, it was slow. When I told my partner that I’d been fiddling with Adsense, Facebook, and message boards during my workday, she gave me a scolding simple solution. “When you catch yourself doing that, why don’t you just paint the office?”

Good point.

Now that the office is done, I see myself growing into the habit of channeling my energies to other important tasks. They can range from sorting the laundry to writing my novel. It doesn’t matter what I do, as long as it’s not Spider Solitaire or Adsense or Facebook. True, it’s still procrastination, but at least something‘s getting done. And you know what? I’m also having a lot of genuine fun. Not the mindless drone-like buzz I get from checking Facebook, Adsense, and Google Analytics yet again.

Also, here’s the key thing: every time I feel like opening another tab, I ask myself a very important question.

Why?

Why do that? What am I going to get from doing this? If I really take the time to answer that question, what I get is really painful:

  • I’m going to play Spider Solitaire or look at Facebook because I’m too lazy/afraid to do my real work.
  • I’m going to check Adsense to see if I earned a measly $0.01.

These answers are embarrassing and pathetic. I didn’t want to be that person anymore, and the only way to do that was to admit that I think these things and find a way to just deal with it. And to actually spend more time doing the gorram work than “dealing with it”.

The Results

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but by accepting the full responsibility of my own productivity and being more conscious about falling into distractions, I actually got a lot of stuff done. Here’s what I accomplished so far:

  • Made significant progress with my Spanish. I’ve been taking in a lot of new material, and it’s just a blast realizing how much I understand now.
  • I started and finished a 7-page short story and submitted it to an anthology. My first short story in five years.
  • I spend less time feeling guilty about not being productive enough, and more time actually doing the work. Any work, as long as it’s something I’m passionate about.

At the same time, though, I’m not going to lie and say that I’ve got it perfect. That I’ve got my shit together. I still fall into the occasional digital fiddling trap. But you know what? There’s less of it. And I know that if I keep getting better at dealing with this every single day, it’s going to happen less and less until it’s barely happening anymore.

It wasn’t as simple as enabling an app. This act of being a productive person rather than a productivity person is going to be a lifelong process. It’s going to take a solid daily commitment. And I guess that’s why it works.

17 October 2009  Leave a comment

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