Happy Labor Day

It’s Labor Day, and I am thinking about work.

I’m thinking broadly: work is everything I do that gives me a sense of having accomplished something when I’m finished. That could be making a summer-veggie pasta dish, drafting text for a web site, folding laundry or serving cake at the 227th anniversary of the Battle of Groton Heights on Sunday. (Notice that two of the four have something to do with food? Hmmm….)

Work is a gift although I certainly don’t always see it that way. I was starting to feel like a servant at the cake table on Sunday, and when deadlines loom or work piles up, I get frantic. I need to do a better job of managing my commitments.

But when I think of what work does for me, I understand its value. To do something creative, to be productive, is fulfilling. It gives my life purpose. What I do during my life is my legacy, and so much of that is tied to how -- and how well -- I do my work.

Who was it that said something like, “Your work is to discover the world and then give yourself to it”?

Gotta go – the laundry is waiting.