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Why love your work? It won’t, of course, love you back. It can’t. Work isn’t a thing that can love. It isn’t alive, it isn’t and won’t ever be living. And my answer is: don’t. Don’t give a fuck about your work. Give all your fucks to the living. Give a fuck about the people you work with, and the people who receive your work—the people who use the tools and products and systems or, more often than not, are used by them.
I’ve been lucky enough to do work that I (more or less) enjoy for the majority of my professional life. But it’s still work. And the evergreen reminder to work in order to enjoy life rather than to live in order to put everything into work is valuable to revisit periodically.
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We talk about technological progress as if it’s a universal good - a rising tide lifting all boats, etc - but we don’t mention the specific texture of living through it. Existing in a state of permanent disruption is deeply exhausting. We’re constantly being forced to relearn interfaces, adjust to features we didn’t ask for, and abandon tools we’d finally mastered because the company decided to pivot on its pivot on its pivot.
Worth contemplating.
Also:
The most productive people I know have a defensive near-conservatism about their tools. They find something that works and they stick with it as long as possible. They resist updates, they use old versions, they build elaborate workarounds to preserve their existing workflows. They understand that mastery takes time - and that constantly relearning everything is incompatible with actually doing anything well. They’ve realized that in a world that demands constant adaptation, the rational move is to create islands of constancy wherever possible.
I enjoy technology and new ways to do things, but finding the “slow-to-adopt yet open to change” balance has been key to my sanity.
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The American Revolution created the Columbus most of us over the age of 30 learned in grade school. Prior to the late 18th century, he was a historical footnote with no connection to the 13 colonies. An Italian, he sailed under a Spanish flag and landed in no part of the modern-day mainland United States. Yet when the need to develop a national history with no discernible connection to Britain arose during the Revolution, early Americans seized upon him. He was a blank slate on whom post-Revolution Americans could project the virtues they wanted to see in their new nation.
Ed Burmila wrote this great article years ago, for The Nation.
Also, I originally found Burmila through his excellent blog Gin and Tacos – highly recommended.