As I begin the new year, I am thinking about work. I’ve already decided that this is the year I will pursue, not necessarily my dreams, but what I believe to be my calling. For years of my life I’ve tried to understand what my ‘purpose’ was. Trying to make sense of life and purpose in a philosophical sense. Predictably, I got nowhere. In the past several weeks, I’ve been radically restricting my way of thinking. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll walk you through the changes in my life, and maybe I can impart something that may aid you only your own journey.
Just today I read this little nugget of wisdom from Dorothy Sayers;
“Work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental and bodily satisfaction, and the medium in which he offers himself to God.” – Dorothy Sayers
This quote perfectly encapsulates my new attitude to work and life. For so many years of my life I was stupid trying to make myself fit into what I thought, and in my weaker moments, what I thought others wanted me to be. Rather than walking into what I was meant to be. For so long in my life I have interpreted work as some sort of curse, something we are saddled with and is to be endured until the task (whatever it may be) is finished. But recently, the most amazing thought occurred to me. Can work actually be a gift?
Stop for just a moment. Think about this. What if we could live life to work instead of working to live? What if there was a way to live, where our work was an expression of our souls? Can work really be a gift? Something that actually adds meaning to our lives? What if work could actually add meaning to our lives? Is my attitude to work simply skewed by the laziness and sloth of the culture that surrounds me? What if work could be the greatest part of my day? These are the questions that I believe could re-define our lives.
For years of my life I would get involved with various projects in order to justify my life somehow. I would work for the sake of working on something, not really concerned with whether it was good work or not. Not concerned with the purpose of the task. Essentially I was just out to expend energy. That seems foolish as well as wasteful.
This year I fully anticipate working harder than I ever have in my life. I anticipate, and welcome it even. This year I will focus on what I have longed to do for years, I will begin writing books. Stories that will thrill, inspire and bring joy to others lives. I believe in my very soul that I am supposed to write. That is my calling if you will. I can say this with confidence because books have been possibly the largest source of joy in my life, and I want to bring that same joy to others.
I also plan on bringing some major changes to my blog. Initially on the outset, I was primarily concerned with merely putting out content, believing that if I put out enough content, I would begin to gain traction. Now my focus is on creating quality content for you all to enjoy.
It wasn’t until I sat down and reflected over the past several weeks the question of why I began to write in the first place. I was inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien, Isaac Asimov, Robert Jordan and such. Books are so much more than just a medium to convey information. Through books we dream, we live and we learn. Through books we are exposed to a wide range of emotions, something that is sorely lacking in our emotionally crippled culture today. I want to give readers the experience of being somewhere they’ve never been. I want every reader to laugh, and cry with my characters, and maybe in doing so, become more empathetic, more compassionate, more human. This is what I live to do.
