Amy said a really nice thing to me the other day. We were talking and she said “One of the things I really admire about you is that your work is play to you.”
I’ve always loved what I do. Yeah – I’ve had my share of really crappy days (and months, and even a crappy year or two – say around 2001) – but even when things are really rough, I treat the “work” part of it as indistinguishable from “play.” As I’ve figured out more things about how I relate to the elusive notion of work life balance I’ve determined that “always being on” is not a requirement for effective work (nor is it sustainable.) Once I’d finally decoupled the idea of work and play, it became easy to put them back together again since so much of what I work on is just a blast.
I was on a call earlier today and the person I was talking to said “sorry for interrupting your vacation in Alaska.” I kindly responded that even though I was up in Alaska, this wasn’t vacation, this was life, and I just happened to be up here right now. I’ve been in front of my computer or on the phone since early this morning (except for an hour when Amy and I wandered over to Cosmic Kitchen for lunch). I’m jamming out to Cowboy Junkies, my favorite person in the world is at her computer five feet away, and it’s been a really fun day. Even the garbage I had to deal with today was “fun” if you squint and look at it the right way.