I am an oblate connected to a Benedictine monastery. An oblate is a lay person who makes a commitment to particular way of monastic life. I do not live at the monastery, though I spend several days there each year. The monks at the monastery where I am connected are Benedictine monks. They are called Benedictine because […]
Will you spend more time thinking about work today, or tomorrow? I will probably invest time and energy in work today, particularly because I am trying do five days of work in four. I have a three-day weekend, especially one dedicated to independence, right in front of me, drawing me toward it. I will clear space
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My work is a combination of working on my own and working with other people. The line separating them becomes more and more difficult to see. It is often working on my own that is more of a challenge for me. I suppose I may be harder to work with than most people. I have expectations of myself that can
Some days are all uphill. There are times when I start at the bottom of a big hill and, no matter how hard and long I work, I do not get very far. They are low gear days. It feels like the weight of the world rests on my shoulders, that building momentum is beyond
Why is our work so important to us? We are fixated on work. The challenges and anxieties we face at work disrupt the rest of our lives. Work affects our relationships, how we sleep, the way we see ourselves. When we are introduced to someone for the first time, work is often one of the first things
I have an unhealthy relationship to work. For as long as I can remember, my connection to work had been all or nothing. There is nothing quite like the feeling of working really well on something I think is important, accomplishing a goal. It is like a drug, or alcohol, or sex, or food, or
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I was brought up to take personal responsibility for my work. Over and over I heard, “If you want something done right, you need to do it yourself.” I knew that I was the most committed, most persistent, most responsible person I could find. I was the person who would keep on working until the work
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We begin our lives in ways that are beyond our control. We are born into families, into communities, into circumstances we do not choose. We spend our lives working to make something of ourselves, to uncover what we have the potential to become. Life is a process we do not finish; we run out of
We trust we can work things out. We appreciate wise advice and suggestions. No one can force us to accept a truth we have not worked out for ourselves. There is something about the experience of doing our own work that develops our convictions. We may be primarily analytical, or intuitive, or emotional; we trust our own
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We are driven to work by insecurity and desire. We are told to be nervous about becoming irrelevant. We are urged to keep our skills and experience up to date. We are advised that we could lose our livelihood, and our retirement, at any moment. We are anxious that technology, or foreign competition, or other
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