Q and A: Work

I had many ideas for how to answer this prompt. Some of them involved poetry (which is kind of a go-to thing for me on this blog), some of them involved one of my standing story ‘verses (actually got quite a bit down a page before the story turned into something else and then it just wouldn’t write anymore for this prompt. I was most put out) and some of them involved a mixture of prose and poetry (which I adore doing as well, because I just love to talk and talk and talk.) I wasn’t certain just how to end up answering this prompt, but in the end, I decided to try doing it in a way different from others that I have done before.

I hope that it flows well for everyone.

Do you live to work or work to live?

This is a tricky question. Living takes work, there’s no doubt about it. Living, even living in pampering, is hard on the body and the mind. Living without pampering is even harder.

But for me, I work so that I can live. I’ve had times in my life where I couldn’t work, not even to wash my own dishes or do my own laundry and those times were horrible. Not being able to do anything for myself at that time re-impressed the value of work to me.

I rejoice in my ability to work even if it’s only in the house and on the farm and not for any kind of paycheck.

Everyone must work in order to live because you can’t live without your body working for you in either way.

Are you purpose driven or do you find happiness in simple pleasures?

Can you not find happiness in the simple pleasures found within your purpose? I have often wondered at why you cannot have a career and a family because it always seemed to me that your family, having a family, was always a part of having a successful career. Maybe it’s the old fashioned thought that having a family that you take care of proves your dependability in the work place, I don’t know. (I hadn’t actually been aware that it would help on anything more than an academic level until one of my friends pointed it out to me in one of her stories.)

There are simple things in life that bring happiness scattered all about in our work. I know that I greatly enjoy just sitting with the goats sometimes and letting them cuddle up to me (well, okay, only the goatlings do that and they enjoy chewing n my clothes while they drift off to sleep). The rabbits when they are so tiny and first hopping around their mothers (who look exhausted and are usually happy when it’s time to start weaning the litters). The chickens and ducks and geese that follow you everywhere on the off chance that you have a treat for them (especially if you are carrying anything that looks even remotely like a bucket, whether it’s obviously empty or not.)

Just because you have a purpose and just because that purpose drives you doesn’t mean that you still can’t find happiness in the midst of your journey in completing your purpose (if, indeed, your purpose has an ending). To me, this isn’t really an either/or situation.

Do you have a strict separation between your professional and your private life, or are they inseparable?

When I had a desk job, I did keep my two lives separate, though that wasn’t a very difficult thing to do at the time. The only people who I knew at work happened to be related to me. (My older brother and brother-in-law worked in different departments and we didn’t even have lunch at the same time. My older sister started working there after me and we used to joke that we were slowly taking over the company via family. Of course two of us only worked there part time while going to school…) That and it was during the years where I wasn’t very…erm…awake.

You can hold down a desk job while working on auto-pilot if you can train your body and mind well enough. Those years are kind of blurry. Though I do miss the shredder.

I loved that shredder.

Now, though, now it would kind of be impossible for me to have any kind of separation between what I do and my private life. Probably because I run the family farm (sort of, it’s not a very big farm at the moment) and I’m kind of the nanny for my sister’s kids (though they are certainly old enough that they don’t really need me to do as much as they used to.) It would be kind of difficult to keep the two separate at this point.

Are you happy with your current arrangement or would you change anything?

I think the only thing I would change would be the fencing. I’d love to have more fencing available (better fencing in some cases) in order to keep the animals in their yards and out of the garden (and out of the neighbor’s calf yard). Other than that, I think this is one of the happiest I’ve ever been since I became an adult.

(Now if only the pigs would stay in their pen…)

This strange attempt at a post was brought to you by the Dungeon Prompt: Live to Work or Work to Live?