Just underneath my left rib cage I feel a small hole opening, a beak scraping the inside of my stomach as it opens and closes waiting to be filled. Just above the curve of my right hip, a small pinch nags my back until it moves just enough to shush the nag for a moment. My feet cheer the invention of ottomans. My eyes would like a break from the day.
When I perform a body scan, my body talks to me, tells me about where I hold stress, reiterates the need for rest, reminds me all things change, get out of kilter occasionally (or more permanently) and grow older. At the end of the work day, my body tells me, and I mainly feel, tired.
There was a time I would have pathologized my tiredness. Do I not like my work? Am I in the job I’m supposed to be in? Do I need to change professions (again)? A lot of close-ended questions, begging a polarity which serves no one.
Granted, many people discuss the importance of loving one’s job summed up in the “Love what you do. Do what you love” mentality. I loved the idea of this and have wanted work which felt effortless and filled with “flow” or the “energy of love.” Yet I didn’t account for my own personality quirks or even reality.
I believe there are people who “love what they do and do what they love.” They are likely the ones who came up with the phrase. They are likely extraverted sales people who know how to market an idea which can hook people into the dream of what might be. I tend to enjoy living in the “what might be” space because dreams are easy and require no work and little effort. In other words dreams are easy and reality is hard.
Being back in my childhood home, taking the same route into downtown my mother and father took before me and experiencing, again, various degrees of resistance/dislike for my work; I am reminded of my mother’s expressions of frustration around her own job. She got up early and rushed to get out the door to beat traffic downtown. She was responsible, conscientious and trustworthy; but she hated working. When my father retired, she got out 1 year later when she was about 55 years old. She did not want to miss any time with Dad and she resented having to leave him everyday, at home, when they could have been together.
I failed to appreciate this early example of “don’t love what you do but do it to survive,” which I saw in my mom. I do not know how my Dad felt about work. When the work was steady, he steadily worked and came home caked with dirt and simply wanted to sit and relax. He worked extra when he could to cover for the inevitable times he would be laid off.
Somewhere being exposed to all of their attitudes and actions regarding work, I absorbed a “hate work” mentality. Don’t get me wrong, I worked from the time I was 16 years old. But no job ever brought me to the place of feeling “flow.” The psychological weight of work made getting out of bed miserable each morning. I have wondered for years what was “wrong” with me and why I could not find the work I “loved.”
Now I recognize I “stewed” in an atmosphere with a vocal mother who really never wanted to work outside the home but had to work to pay the bills. I saw my Dad physically exhausted from his blue collar job. What felt normal for me was to have resentment about work or to find it fatiguing. I had few examples of people who “loved” work and certainly no examples within my home.
Some of my disdain for work was simply carrying on the family tradition because that is what felt normal for me. In this realization, I felt some release from “weight of work” I carry. It also gave me freedom to live in a third space which isn’t just “love what you do” or “hate what you do,” but allows me to do both and be okay with it. It also helps me allow work to simply be neutral to me – I don’t have to get so emotionally involved – it’s just work!
But I still want to enjoy what I do. And after years of trying out different options, I finally found the work which smacks of vocation and calling even when I am tired at the end of day or occasionally dread the beginning of the work week. I don’t have to love the work all the time, nor do I have to question if my quest for my “life’s work” is in peril because of the occasional dip in enthusiasm or energy. The third option, as usual, gives the most freedom.
For being tired, this post is way too long. Good night and may you always find the third option.
3/12/25
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