Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

Sunday musings…

1) Assume goodwill and goodwill will ensue. Extend kindness and kindness will find you.

2) Own every defeat. Give away every victory.

3) The law of supply and demand is immutable, irresistible, unrelenting and unavoidable. It cannot be controlled or eliminated; it is a natural consequence of our social evolution. Attempts to regulate supply and demand have failed miserably and universally in all instances over all time.

After all, the inevitable Black Market that is born of regulation always runs on supply and demand.

4) Dinner on Saturday with Lil’bingo and his GF came around to a discussion of how expensive it is to live in Chicago (the kids are very fond of Chicago). This, in turn, led naturally to the topic of “live to work vs. work to live.” A moving target for sure, but man do I wish someone had fed me one night when I was 19 and talked about that.

Why? Well, how many folks do you know who have managed to fold together their vocation and their avocation? Their employment and their passion? How many people do you know who give the same answer to the questions “What do you do for a living?” and “What is your hobby?” Not many, eh? In the world of my day job I can name exactly two. Cleveland has been good to me, but the fact remains that I moved to Cleveland solely for the job.

Cleveland has neither ocean nor mountain.

It’s quite a bit different in the CrossFit world, though. Young “Daigle’s-On-Fire” is about to join a few dozen folks whose day job is CF HQ, a dream job he barely had the guts to dream and now he’s about to embark on a 3000 mile trip to the intersection between work to live/live to work. One of my new friends met here, chez CrossFit, is an attorney who openly calls his day job his dream. You guessed it…he’s CF’s corporate counsel. Work and passion, vocation and avocation all wrapped up into one whole. No real “live to work or work to live” stuff for them, or indeed for most of the 3500+ Affiliate owners like my sons. I’m not entirely sure if they, or Coach, truly appreciate how monumental this is.

For the rest of us, though, we must sit down and have a little chat with ourselves. Is there something that makes us truly happy? Is there a place where we have a greater likelihood of achieving that happiness, or where it might be more easily attained? Sure, there might be additional responsibilities we must shoulder (support a family, repay an obligation) that might complicate the conversation, but that still leaves room for each of us to LIVE. Could you do whatever that is? Could you move wherever there is? All of the folks I’ve met in Key West or Park City or San Diego who work at whatever in order to fish, ride, or surf come to mind.

How about me? How am I doing with this work/live thing? Actually, I’m doing much better now than at most other points in my life despite the fact that my new business reality is a somewhat lesser version of past realities. I’m really good at what I do, and I accept and fulfill the responsibility of continuing to improve; the people for whom I work fare better now than ever before.

But more and more what I do for work is just that…work. My day job is what allows me to do the stuff that is probably a truer indication of who I am, of what makes me tick. I live as fully as I possibly can when I am at work; I’m good at what I do and it’s easier to enjoy something when you do it well. But I work to live.

Must it be thus? Is it somehow my destiny to not share the lives of those for whom live to work is synonymous with work to live? Meh, I dunno. It takes a certain type of courage to make that leap sometimes. I have a friend who lives in Del Mar who once asked me “when are you going to leave that dead end job and work with me?” I clearly didn’t have the courage at the time to fully explore that. Now? Who knows?

In the end, though, I think it’s important to have that conversation with yourself. Working to live, or living to work? It’s especially important if who you are and what you do are not both found where you work.

Think of it as a life in progress.

I’ll see you next week…

Posted by bingo at April 14, 2012 6:42 PM