We are all asked to do more than we can do.
Madeleine L’Engle
I never loved writing as much as I did when all I did was think about it, while sitting at a temp desk, or standing behind a coffee counter, or moving from table to table with an order pad and a tray. Exotic, evocative story ideas would occur to me from conversations and chance glances out the window, from books I read during my breaks, from ridiculous occurrences that would have bothered me if I took the job seriously.
But the only thing I took seriously was my unrequited wish to write for a living.
I would store all these ideas up during the day, and spend the evening imagining how great life would be, if I could only ponder them while typing, instead of rolling silverware.
Back then, I believed that doing what you love for a living began with jumping out of bed each day like a kid on Christmas morning, as hungry for work as a lumberjack is for breakfast.
Doing what you love took place in a room artfully spare, with bars of light falling through a window onto a honey of an antique desk.
Doing what you love, when the you was me, offered a swivel chair to sit in, and comfortable black clothes to wear. (Because arty people do it that way, that’s why.)
Doing what you love involved a pencil that I chewed on, while staring with intense, capable concentration at a neatly typed page.
But the page was never marked up. What daydream involves writing things anything less than perfectly the first time?
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Living with things — work, relationships, ways of life — that we love takes a lot more out of us than living with things that we’re merely fine with.
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Here’s the reality, in case you wondered:
I wake up — usually in the same clothes that I was wearing the entire day before. My laptop is open on the bed beside me; if I’m lucky, I didn’t kick the charger cord off the bed in my sleep and cause it to disconnect and the battery to drain.
For a moment, I lie there in the still morning light, thinking of all the failures of yesterday that I have to face.
That article that I was so excited to write, and have subsequently turned into crap . . . overdue crap, at that.
The technical writing project waiting in my inbox, as inspiring to work with as a blown-out tire.
The emails I have to send requesting payment, again, from a client who never hesitates to send me multiple edits but manages to be off the grid whenever his invoice comes due.
And, of course, the creative endeavors: my personal blog, and photographs that need editing. The fun stuff, which takes twice as much time to complete as the boring projects do.
And that is just work.
I should also probably go running. And read my Bible and pray. And take a shower, because I can’t remember when last I did that. At some point, I’ll have to eat. At some point, I’ll either have to take a nap or make coffee.
It seems a lot easier to just stay in bed. Which I do, for the next 30 minutes to an hour. Because why rush out of bed, just to face the likelihood of failure?
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It was hard enough to confess my failures, back when every day felt like a failure because I wasn’t living up to my full potential.
It’s harder now that I’ve been blessed with the kind of work that makes people sigh wistfully. “What a great life,” they say, and I feel the weight of their deferred dreams settle heavily on my shoulders. I should be better, stronger, more worthy of the gift of doing what I love.
It’s excusable to fail at something you don’t care about. But it feels unconscionable to fail at something that you’ve waited your whole life for.
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Nobody seems to say this, when they urge you to find what you love and do it for a living.
Nobody warned me that it would be nearly impossible to go out with friends after work, because I’d be thinking about how much more work I could get done if I stayed home.
Nobody told me how hard it would be to get up in the morning, and face the likelihood of failing to meet my own standards of craftsmanship and beauty and diligence.
Back when I was temping and waitressing, I never thought about work after it was over. I sucked the life out of every weekend. I loved taking naps, I loved eating dinner, and I took long, leisurely runs at sunset almost every day. I never hesitated to go out in the evenings, to hang with friends or see a show.
Now any time I’m supposed to be having fun, I’m thinking about work. That’s what happens when you do what you love: you don’t stop loving it, but the relationship gets a lot more complicated.
I wonder if this is why my dad chose engineering as a career over sports broadcasting. I wonder if this is why my mom quit school to raise me.
Maybe it’s not that simple.
But when you work at something you don’t care much for, it’s easy to let go when you ought to. It’s just this eight-hour blank in the middle of your day. It leaves all your energy for the things you really love.
Sometimes I feel as if it’s not worth it, to be doing what I love. Sometimes I wish for the respite of a job that asks only that I fill a seat for eight hours. Knowing your purpose brings you face-to-face with the possibility of failing to fulfill it.
In her essay “A Coal in the Hand,” Madeleine L’Engle writes this:
It is not only our hurts which we are required to give over, but our wholenesses, too. It must be all his.
I’m used to badgering God with my desires, my needs, and my neediness. It seems, at this remove, that I was assuming that once those prayers were answered, things would take care of themselves.
I never anticipated that doing what I love would involve learning to faithfully fail at it.
To confess to God constantly my unworthiness of the prayer he has answered.
To ask him for his help in enjoying the gift when he finally gave it to me.
Flickr photo (cc) by Neil. Moralee
