Why Do We Work

I've spent a lot of time thinking about work:

Why do we spend so much time working?

What do we expect to gain from our work?

And especially pressing in the age of AI: Does our work, the way we do it, even matter anymore?

These are the questions I formulate when my brain is thinking about work in its most common form: wage-earning work.

But what about the other type of work? The kind that approaches a kind of vocation, or of sharing your talents with the world? Some may call this art, but that connotation could be misleading.

Maybe it's a bus driver who grows the best tomatoes in his neighborhood, and shares them freely.

Maybe it's the school teacher who keeps a notebook of charcoal sketches that they've never shown another soul.

Whatever it is, when I think of this kind of work, I often feel its absence from my life. There are good days, when ideas are flowing, and I'm able to write what feels like ten thousand words. But there are other days, more voluminous in number, when I don't write, or imagine, or create at all.

And this daily blog is an attempt to cultivate consistency, and to make space for my own mysterious magic to enter the world.