Sterling Heights High School
Run Time: 60:00
The map screenshot is from MapQuest, which I downloaded to my phone recently when the Family Chat cancelled Apple. When you finish a route in the MapQuest app, a “Quest Complete” notification pops up, giving it a hint of adventure. As it turns out, using MapQuest can be an adventure, as my lovely wife and I found out last Friday night around Midnight, on our way home from a Red Wings game. It took us off the freeway, then to a closed on-ramp to get back onto the freeway, then 7 or 8 miles of dirt road to find another on-ramp.
It also tried to tell me that my local record store was back in the old location that it moved out of two years ago, and it has had trouble finding some places by name. I enjoy the retro feeling, and the computer voice options are interesting, but… I am not using it on my work trips. I am sticking with Apple Maps on my work phone. I sometimes have time commitments on my visits, and I feel it is wise to remove the Quest feature from my work travel.
I recently shared in the Family Chat that I am struggling with the impulse to care about work. Work is important. For financial reasons, of course, but also for mental health. One of my customers in Montana told me last year to never retire, because I’d be dead within a year. He’s a few years younger than me, so I imagine his perspective will change, but I get the sentiment of the message. Leisure alone, even if you can afford it, is not enough. Throw in self-care, and you have minimally sufficient purpose and meaning. Work adds both purpose and meaning, and increases the value of the leisure and self-care.
Work doesn’t have to be a paid job. Work can be home repair. It can be changing a diaper. It can be writing a blog post. I don’t feel like it’s easily definable. It seems like one of those know-it-when-you-see-it things, but also, perhaps even moreso, one of those know-its-absence-when-you-don’t-see-it things.
Writing, for me, is work. I enjoy it, but in the same way that I enjoy my job, or running. I enjoy checking the “complete” box. I enjoy coming up with a plan and executing it. I enjoy solving problems with freedom and autonomy. Creative work, like writing, is rife with freedom and autonomy. I sometimes think that I would enjoy it if writing were my job, instead of sales. Currently no one is paying me to write, so that is an obstacle, but if they were, how would I adapt to that transition?
As it is now, I don’t like to sit and write for more than about 25 minutes at a time, and rarely do I write more than an hour in a day. I heard a writing instructor recently state on a podcast, that writers should limit themselves to two hours per writing session. I think that’s a good general rule. The work of writing is more than just writing. It’s imagining, researching, thinking, and doing non-writing tasks that allow the sub-conscious to do a fair amount of the work. Really, the sub-conscious does the writing, and the conscious mind edits.
Currently I am actively working on three long-form writing projects: one memoir and two novels. I could envision writing full-time with a mix of projects. I am doing research for one of the novels, and research takes time. I could see myself writing one fiction and one non-fiction work simultaneously, with one-third of the total work time devoted to research. I don’t think I’d want to sit in the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library for nine hours a day reading Presidential papers like Robert Caro does, but three hours, maybe.
My regular job is simply not that fulfilling, and the impulse to care more than I need to is strong. My responsibilities are minor compared to other positions I’ve held, and I fight the impulse to try to control more than I do now. I see where our company leadership goes astray, and I know I could help with course correction, and I have years of experience executing simple strategies that they seem incapable of devising, discovering, or deploying, but they don’t ask for my help. They have siloed me, and I’ve let myself be siloed, and I’m kind of happy and content in my silo. The trick is to not care. The challenge is to find the way to contribute positively in the siloed role, to lead by example, to influence indirectly, even if no one is paying attention.
What I care about in my work — really care about — is the plot of the novel that I’m outlining. It’s the chord pattern of the song I am writing. It’s the curating of the old work journals that I’m converting to a memoir. It’s even the layout of the pavers that I’m going to arrange below our rear deck. It’s NOT the shortsightedness of the component availability restrictions set by our upper management. It’s NOT the failure of our New Product Development department. It’s NOT the self-congratulatory vacuity of our Marketing team. It’s NOT the reactionary philosophy of our Customer Service and Sales procedures.
It’s not that it’s all above my pay-grade, or outside the scope of my responsibility. It doesn’t matter that much anymore. Someone else is handling all of that. Poorly. Will I look back with regret in 20 years that I didn’t muscle in and try to take over? I doubt it. If I were 20 years younger, I think I’d feel there was more at stake, that it mattered more. I won’t die within a year of retirement. I won’t stop working. I’ll be doing the work that matters to me. If anything, that will prolong my life.
