I don’t want to work today!

May 21, 2008

I didn’t want to wake up yesterday. I opened my eyes and thought: “I have to get up. But why? So that I can go to work? Again?! I don’t want to go to work, I’m tired of work! Might as well stay in bed.” Why would i feel that, I wondered as I dragged myself out of bed. I work at home, I don’t have to go anywhere I don’t want to be, what I do is what I have chosen to do, I like doing it, no one forces me to do anything, so … why would I feel that I have no choice? Why would I feel this tiredness and resistance? As I looked into it I realized that “getting to work” means giving up myself. It means that for certain amount of time I “have to” do things for other people, because they payed me for it, or because I need them to pay me for it. It is not my own time, I am not in control, I am not even present. This, the work, is a time when I turn into a picture-producing machine. This has nothing to do with where I work, for whom, or what I do. I do just what I want, when I want and how I want it, and still, when I don’t pay attention, my work becomes simply a way of surviving the reality, making money, being productive, being a good girl. Not because my boss tells me so – but because my mind tells me so. I have realized that as soon as I sit behind my desk I remove myself from the situation and just “do what needs to be done”. It has very little to do with me, generally. And then again, there are moments when, caught up in creating a design, I forget that this is for someone or something, I get lost in it, excited and totally absorbed in the creative process, and at the end I cannot believe that this is what I do for a living! This is not work – it’s fun! What is different? I am different. I realized yesterday that when I remain present, when I don’t remove myself, when I don’t separate my day into “my personal time” and “work time” then there is only my time. I don’t design because I have to, because someone paid me for it – I design because I am in a certain relationship with a person, with my client. I choose to engage in this relationship. Inside of this relationship we both agree to work on a certain project, we both contribute to the project, the project becomes an expression of who we are, the client and I. It is a full, and absolutely equal partnership. Me working on a website is not me producing something to sell for money – it is me expressing who I am, in relationship with the project and with other people involved in it. Me working is no different from me hanging out with a friend, going for a walk, having dinner with my husband – it is me engaging in relationship, and expressing myself through and in it. There is no separation between me and work. There is no boss (or client) that has a power over me because he hired me, because he pays me. There is only a partnership. There is only me, creating my life, being involved in relationship, expressing myself in whatever way I choose at the moment. In this reality there is no such thing as “work”, as opposite to “not working”. In this reality distinctions such as “productivity” loose their meaning, because the focus is not on how much I am able to produce in a certain amount of time. The focus is on how present I can be with a project, on how I can hold space for the project to grow, open, develop. Actions, “doing things”, come naturally, effortlessly, as a result of the space I hold, as a result of how I choose to express who I am. In this reality there is nothing to resist, literally, there is nothing else, separate from me, that I could resist. There is only me, expressing myself inside of myriads of relationships.

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