I’ve been thinking a lot about work lately. Not just my own, but the concept of it. I have a friend with an intriguing retirement plan. When she’s ready to stop working, she plans to buy a small farm. Not a working farm, but a piece of land with a few animals and maybe a small garden. Reasons, in short, to get up and move around every day.
As a culture I think we’ve lost the connection between pleasure and work, that there is pleasure to be experienced in work. And not just good works or meaningful work, but hard or even monotonous work. Accomplishment feels good. It can be finishing a book, winning an award, or marvelling at the stack of boxes you folded.
That’s what I did last night. Friends had a “wrap party” to pack up art projects for The Thing (a super cool, nay brilliant, quarterly subscription art program). We ate Little Star pizza (I’m sorry, I just don’t get the whole deep-dish pizza thing; never have and looks like I never will), drank beer, and stamped, folded, packed, and taped boxes. Chatting and laughing all the way.
So I’m thinking of other work parties to have. What I’d like to do is have a group come over, cuddle around the monster needlepoint and work it, but that seems somehow more maniacal and less fun. A key element is the ability for people to drop in and out of the work. Tamale making is always an option. I’m open to food and non-food ideas.
Maris | 18-Oct-08 at 5:59 pm | Permalink
love the idea! “work” seems so much easier when it’s turned into part-fun.