All Fun and No Work

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Inspiration

Nothing too inspired about this one – it’s not like I had a long week or was tired that day. Simply a thought that crossed my mind while driving home from work. I tried out the voice transcriber functionality on the phone with passable results, then edited to the freeform below, just because.

All Fun and No Work

There is a common saying that goes

If you love what you do you’ll never

Work a day in your life.

Like every person who has done a day at work,

I know this statement to be a completely absurd.

Work is work, no matter what they say

But I have been thinking on this for a while.

I think there are three ways of looking at a job:

There is the job at which you are the best;

There is the job from which you find the most joy;

There is the job that brings the most fulfillment.

If someone were to ask me a question straight-up,

Though I don’t know why they would do so,

Of what would you think is the perfect job,

I would probably respond with the following:

I am best at something analytical, mathematic, problem-solving –

Maybe a career in engineering as per my undergraduate degree.

I find the most fun in designing, innovating, creating –

Maybe a career in architecture or woodworking or construction.

I derive the most fulfillment from that which makes us human –

Listening to stories, seeing the spectrum of human emotion.

I find the last criterion to be the most important,

So perhaps that is why I ended up in the field of medicine,

As that covers all three, but especially the third.

At least that is what I tell myself now,

Driving back from a long day of work.

I’ll see what I think at 4 am tomorrow morning.

End

Reflection

In rereading this snippet, I realize that I didn’t even mention that having a job serves to (hopefully) provide for one’s shelter, food, and other basic essentials. Perhaps this is too self-evident, maybe it’s a sign of subconscious privilege, or maybe both.