Ah another Friday and the end of another long work week for me. I am quite tired having gotten up at 5:20 every morning for the past week. I had set for myself the microshift of getting up between 15 and 30 minutes earlier every day this week, and for the most part I have accomplished that, though I am no doubt still becoming accustomed to the new schedule. Of course I get tired earlier in the evening than usual. I’ve conked out in the middle of writing this blog a few times this week, laptop resting on my lap as I doze for 30, 45, or 60 minutes. I am grateful to be at the end of a long, tiring week during which I was on campus for 14 hours a few days. I have found myself mentally and physically exhausted and am looking forward to resting a little this weekend and hopefully refreshing myself.
I am grateful for having expended intellectually stimulating, creative energy this week. There are times when I spend energy doing “busy work,” attending meetings that have little to no real value to the work I am doing and are draining in their lack of generative energy. Meeting for the sake of meeting, spending more time talking about things than doing them or talking about matters that do not feel as important as some of the things I want and need to be working on is taxing in its own right. If I’m going to sit in a meeting, I generally want to produce something that will benefit the people I serve in some form or fashion. Putting my mental and emotional energy into creating things that meet people where they are and move them along in positive ways is a good use of time and energy. I am grateful to do work that allows me to use some of my gifts and talents and to work around people who are deeply engaged in similar work with similar motivations.
I am grateful for work. Having spent 18 months without full-time, benefited employment, I definitely struggled through a financial, intellectual, and emotional drought. And while work isn’t the only thing that defines a person’s worth, it does add a dimension that is important to consider. I am grateful to be contributing my energy and talent in ways that at the end of the day I mostly feel good about. So as tired as I might be when I get home at the end of a long day or the conclusion of a long week, I can look back on much of what I’ve done and known that (a) I’ve done the best I could, given much time and energy and (b) contributed to the wellbeing of people I work with and on behalf of. And that is a very good thing.
“To find out what one is fitted to do and to secure the opportunity to do it is the key to happiness,” educator and scholar John Dewey said back in 1923. I have been fortunate to have done good work in my field of endeavor over a 30-year career, though I remain certain that I have labored in a role for which I was not fully “fitted” to do. There’s an old proverb that says “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.” And that is what I have endeavored to do. Fortunate indeed are the people who are doing work they love and are uniquely suited to, the rest of us work with all our might and do the best we can where we are. Being able to give my best in the service of people is worth coming home tired and definitely worth my appreciation and gratitude.
