Work-Work
Being sixty-eight years old and semi-retired presents numerous opportunities to see life from different angles, to revisit notions I accepted as true without a thought and re-examine ideas that came with being part of the rat race. I’m no longer part of the rat race. Or any race. I’ve got time to think about things I wouldn’t have considered twenty years ago. Almost daily, I have Reflections from an Older Perspective, as the slug line at the top pf the page says. This morning, I told Muri, This is going to be a work day. She asked, What do you mean? I said, Work-Work, meaning paying consulting work. Twenty years ago, there’d have been no question … I’d be getting into my car to commute to Hughes Aircraft Company. Gardening and being a handyman around the house were Chores. They were Work but not Work-Work. Playing the guitar and drawing were Hobbies. If I gave my kids a job and they said, This is boring, or This isn’t any fun, I’d say, That’s why they call it Work. If it was fun, they’d call it a Hobby. I had a lot of stock answers back then. That was also before the advent of notions like Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow. Somehow, I doubt that book would have done well during the depression. Somehow, I think there are lot of people with Younger Eyes starting to realize it’s not always true.
So, back to today. After a week in Arizona, being a Papa to my grandkids, it’s time to make some progress on our company’s one job. Work-Work. If you’ve been following along for a while, you know that this job requires programming in a scientific language called MATLAB. I’m good at it. I also find it interesting. You might say I enjoy it. Do I love it? Hmmm. I also
have taken on a small task for a former client analyzing a circuit, something I haven’t done since I was an undergraduate (shortly after the wheel was invented). I’m doing it because I want to see if I can, because it might be fun. But love? I chose to be an engineer because I was good at science and engineers were making a lot of money at the time. My Dad had always regretted choosing to join the Army instead of going to engineering school … there is no doubt that influenced me. Perhaps I Did What Makes Money and the Like Followed. It’s hard for me to say I love programming in MATLAB or using Laplace transforms to analyze circuits. It sounds extraordinarily geeky. Now, writing I love and that’s why I’m doing it today before I start my Work-Work. I’m beginning to doubt the money will ever follow. But that’s OK.
I sometimes wonder if these perspectives were available to me when I had Younger Eyes. I think I’d been happier if I’d taken some time to know what I liked and loved, even when it was Work-Work. If you still have Younger Eyes, give it a try and get back to me, OK?
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Older Eyes 
May 24, 2012 at 4:09 pm
You’re right about the perspective from older eyes being different especially from the viewpoint of work. Now I pretty much work when I want and the things I work at such as gardening, sewing, don’t feel like work…more like fun.
But with that being said, I never had younger eyes. I always looked at things from the vantage point of what needed to be done, had to be done, like it or not…just do it. When I hear people talk about the foolish things they did when they were young, I have nothing to contribute. I never chose to do the fun stuff over the work or study stuff.
Now that I am older, I am doing some of what I think is the fun stuff.
May 25, 2012 at 12:56 pm
I’d like to think I still have YOUNGER EYES, and I really like getting the perspective from your OLDER EYES.
May 26, 2012 at 2:52 pm
As you know, I’m 35. I went into a field I loved, and though I graduated from college at age 22, I started doing what I loved at 20. I worked my a$$ off for it, but I was very lucky to have that opportunity. But my business has a tendency to turn on those who give to it the most. Fifteen years later, I ain’t lovin’ it. There are a lot of reasons for that, and for me, the question is: Will that have been the only work I ever loved? My first decade in my business was wonderful because I was passionate, but though my business lauds passion, it is mere lip service when it comes to the way things really shake out. It is not a high-paying field, and I am at a place in my life when I need more money in order to invest in my future. My income is squarely in the territory of Too Little To Buy Real Estate, Too Much To Find A First Job In A New Career That Pays More (or even as much). Older Eyes may say “It’s a job. You get paid. No one owes you more than that.” Having been raised the right way, I agree in theory. I realize that I’m fortunate to have a job and be able to support myself. But what I do tends to exhaust without reward (other than that highly-appreciated paycheck) and intrude on life outside of work – more so now that I don’t like it. Is doing what makes the money the better approach? I took the job I currently have for the money at significant personal “life” expense. Less than a year later, the money was taken back and I had sacrificed a great deal for a job that took even more. With professional loyalty (on both sides), pensions, job security and other things now in the past, Younger Eyes have to struggle with a new reality: not knowing what might happen next.