Work

It’s TTC Knitalong planning time again. This year, I've taken on a bigger role in what we’re calling “Communications” , working on media and writing for the blog.  It’s a remarkable amount of work. Head over to the Knitalong blog to see some of the fruit of my efforts.  Each evening this week I've spent about an hour and a half researching and writing. This after eight hours at my job. However, I do not mind it all. I love doing it. It’s fun and challenging. Rather, it's fun because it's challenging.

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.

Windjammer Socks by Jennifer Tepper: published in The Knitter's Book of Wool