This has got me thinking about the nature
of “work” and “jobs”. My day job, where I sit doing very little, rarely using my
brain and having no decision making power at all, is certainly not what I would
call my work. It’s what I do for money. Yes, I continue to look for other
opportunities but for now, I need to pay my rent and feed my kid. (I sometimes
worry that those other opportunities may never materialize but that’s a
discussion for another day).
Over
time I've learned that it is essential for my spiritual and mental health to get
my work satisfaction in my private life. The Knitalong is one example of this –
and it’s for a wonderful charity. In the summer when my day job lays me off, I
work for theatre festivals that barely pay but that provide the constant
problem solving moments that remind me I
am a thinking human being with skills. I've never believed that people
inherently love leisure and hate to work. We just need tasks that engage and satisfy
us. Then it doesn't feel like working at all. Too bad so many people don’t have
this in their professional lives.
This comes back, as many things do, to
knitting. Some find it dull or say they don’t have the patience. In other
words, it’s too much work. In classic
novels, I have noticed that the embroidery or knitting the heroine has in her lap is often called her 'work' by the author, and not in a nice way. Interesting. Those
of us that truly get it, see it as so much more than a chore. We delight in the challenge of
figuring out the pattern, the math, of choosing yarn, of watching the
movement of our hands actually make something.
You go through this amazing process and end up with something concrete that’s beautiful
or practical or both. Yes, it’s work but it’s joy as well. I plan. I create. I knit. I work.
On that note, I finished another sock.
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| Windjammer Socks by Jennifer Tepper: published in The Knitter's Book of Wool |