Working Vacation

Christmas is past, and the new year looms large. 2009 will be the year I become single again at 45, possibly for the rest of my life, though a part of me hopes not. This passing year is the least memorable of my life in so many ways, but I remain grateful for such blessings as I have: a lovely daughter, supportive parents, many friends, my hobbies, my faith.

The past week, ostensibly a holiday, was crammed with less-than-restful activities that precluded blogging, hiking, banjo playing, reading, and just about everything else I consider recreational. It was instead a time of formidable ice storms that hampered travel, of playing with Elaine, of making hectic preparations for the last Christmas I will enjoy as a married man for an indefinite interval. My family and I tried our best to be supportive of my wife; she spent both Christmas Eve and Christmas with us, and seemed content. More than once I reflected during those two days on the surreality of the situation: By all accounts, I should be simmering with conflicted emotions about this woman, who not many months past gave me the "let's just be friends" routine after seventeen years of marriage. Yet the waters of my heart, muddied by such emotions not long ago, have cleared miraculously, something I attribute to the Almighty. A process that friends of mine have assured me will take years -- the anger, the resentment, the guilt, the self-doubt, the crushing grief -- all of this and much more were my lot for the space of a few anguished weeks. But now my wife and I have become, truly, "just friends," and I have trouble already remembering how I once felt about her. That, in my view, is the operation of the Atonement in a mighty way, helping me to make the best of a bad situation.

In any event, the week of Christmas was horribly unproductive. My exercising routine suffered and I fell behind in my free-lance writing assignments. Why is it that our culture is so obsessed with productivity? No one will ever accuse me of being a workaholic, but I often feel the phantom need to be productive goading me like a hot needle.

No time for play now, Elaine. I have work to do. Go amuse yourself, and Daddy will come up and play a little later. Elaine is getting a little too used to that refrain, my conscience warns me. Lately, when she's immersed in make believe, I sometimes overhear disquieting snippets from her role playing, like "Sorry, I can't play right now," and "I'll play with you later, sweetie." Out of the mouths of babes.

I was told once, though I've been unable to verify it firsthand, that Brigham Young opined that four hours a day would suffice to do the "sweat of thy brow" work prescribed at the time of the fall, if we lived in a more equitable world. The rest of our time, presumably, would be spent with our families, in edifying recreation, and doing God's work. Whether this is true or not, I take grave exception with a culture that worships work for its own sake. I read of people working literally all the time, but for what purpose they cannot fathom. To save money? No, their debts and spending habits preclude that. To purchase time for leisure? Not really; many people refuse to take extended vacations, because they see something vaguely decadent in, say, a month-long backpacking trip.

In point of fact, work has become something of a false God, insofar as it distracts from life's other priorities. How many members of my own religion have I known who use the job as an excuse to miss church services, to stay away from the house and family, and to refuse church callings when extended!

The problem is that work is equated with remunerative productivity; nothing else qualifies. This blog, for example, is not deemed work, although some of the entries took considerable time and reflection. Neither is developing a musical talent, or learning a language for the fun of it, or reading an excellent book. And the reason these things are categorized as baneful leisure activities is that they do not earn money.

Not that there's anything wrong with earning money. I've never been wealthy, but I've never been a slacker, either. But money or any other material aim as an end in itself is no justification for work; only a goal is. It is not enough to work; we must strive to accomplish things. With money, that means budgeting and saving, not just spending reflexively. With so-called leisure activities, it means doing, as much as possible, things that will be productive and righteous and enlarge our souls. By such a definition, blogging and recreational writing are indeed forms of work; so is playing with a daughter, or decorating a Christmas tree, or learning a new song on the banjo. And from my experience, even work proper -- the things we do to bring home the bacon as we should -- ought to be something commensurate with our God-given talents and abilities. A good friend of mine is an accountant, a job he finds maddening at times, but withal fulfilling, because accounting is something R., with his careful, disciplined mind and temperament, was born to do. I once told him that I could be an accountant, but I'd be a lousy one. It has never made any sense to me to try to do something for which one is not suited, if only to earn more money.

Anyway, the Christmas week has passed and I'm reverting to productive form. I churned out one article and one piece of editing, both of which were paid assignments, and am working on others, in no small measure to ensure that the checks, above and beyond my contract salary as an academic, keep rolling in. I'm saving money, you see, both for a general nest egg and for a Huber banjo, the most beautiful, sweetest-sounding five-stringed instrument ever built, one that will be a dream to play when I finally come up with the several grand required to buy it. My new banjo is to be the capstone on my midlife crisis, a needless indulgence that will be a lot cheaper than the Harleys, Corvettes, and RVs that other men of my age bracket confer on themselves when life goes sour.

I'm rambling now, which is what happens when you blog past midnight. What I'm trying to say is: Most worthwhile things in life are work of one sort or another -- but aimless toil, which seems to be the lot of so many Americans caught in the "rat race," is pointless idolatry that distracts from things of eternal import.
Buenas noches.