it is easy and interesting

I’d like to write something fun, but let’s talk about work. Of course, ideally, work should be fun.

Wait. Even more ideal: intensely pleasurable.

What about work?

Know that it is good to work. Work with love and think of liking it when you do it. It is easy and interesting. It is a privilege. There is nothing hard about it but your anxious vanity and fear of failure.

– Brenda Ueland

And:

You have the right to work, but for the work’s sake only. You have no right to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working. Never give way to laziness, either.

– Bhagavad Gita

It is good to work. I want to work. I’ve been working. Writing posts every day. It probably seems like work to you, reading them. (I’m glad you’re sticking with the chore.)

Can we have fun now?

I’m feeling the freedom with my first drafts to write whatever glob I can sneeze out of my brain, but then there is some worry, that I’m avoiding “real” work somehow. I procrastinate on starting or re-visiting the “harder” first drafts. I know that I can — and perhaps must — throw a lot of words away, but then the fear of scarcity arises, along with the desire to hold on too long.

“There is nothing hard about it but your anxious vanity and fear of failure.”

I recently wrote something about my dad. I like it. I’m still working on it, but it feels like something more substantive than this one. Yet posts like “this one” are okay. I may keep sending them out the door while I work on others. I’ll try keeping them short, and try not expecting much from them. They’re practice in developing habits. The habit of writing. The habit of publishing. The habit of sharing with you in a more natural way.

And how wonderful if I can learn to let the words go after publishing. Let them flow down the river and out to sea, equally content if they are seen or unseen as they pass over the rocks and the weeds, knowing that with time, the words will cut a deeper channel.