A Piece of Something Different
We plod through this world as if it is a punishment.
Work builds a supply of resentment and various sized piles of assigned value currency. At home, we curse the fact that work comes tomorrow or Monday and do our best to ignore one another in favor of our phones.
It’s relaxing. It’s how I unwind.
The assigned value currency (AVC) is allocated to fulfill obligations first, feeds us second, then fills basic needs. The dregs serve as funds for entertainment.
It’s so easy to become consumed by the pursuit of only the last use for AVC! It’s a time away from all of the ways the world drags us down. We seek that singular piece of happiness. We ignore the idea it is another place to assign AVC in a way that is simply more pleasurable and palatable.
All of life seems to stand between us and our entertainment. Why must it come last?
It needn’t be purely terminal.
All the things found between entertainment, they do have a certain kind of value towards happiness. Even the hated source of our AVC has a power we may forget or fail to notice.
It’s not always something that happens naturally. Sometimes you have to make it so.
You have been tasked with moving 300 dodge balls from one container to another using only your hands. A space of twenty feet separates the bins. A set AVC will be assigned to you when the move is complete.
How do you do it?
Do you pack your arms full of as many as possible and carry them to the other bin to be dumped? Then make trip after trip?
I should think that there’s a more enjoyable way for the menial task. Perhaps some target practice with trick shots? You’re making AVC, but no one said it had to be boring.
This situation isn’t anywhere close to reality.
However, there are opportunities to make work less torturous.
There’s a quick word with a coworker or a competition between you two for the most tasks completed in a set time. It can even be your way of making a joke or winning some internal prize against yourself.
I tend to set time limits on tasks that are on the edge of reasonable. There are no stakes but my own. It makes the most tedious parts of my job somehow exciting and fulfilling. My mold drawings took 10% less time the last go around!
With these ideas, can we make pieces here?
It’s all incredibly stupid from the standpoint of useful, but that assessment misses the idea. The goal is to bring LIFE back into a good portion of who you are.
Attempts to bring life to tasks sucks away the tedium and creates small, temporary spaces filled with little victories.
Honestly, I bet you’re more productive if you incorporate focused screwing around into your work on those days that it slogs on aimlessly.
AVC is essential, but it’s equally vital that we direct, or reframe, our AVC source into something that doesn’t bring down our lives.
Reframe?
Yes. Often I’ve noticed that I am suddenly hating my job and coming home bitter. Work was leaving me something that wasn’t worth having in the house.
Enter Dave, arriving home after a hard day at AVC supply with the pursuit in mind.
What does he do?
He gives a token greeting to his wife and children before sitting in front of the TV and zoning out. He may be on his phone posting “Work sux” memes on books of face.
Aside from that, he’s unresponsive. He’s had enough. The day has sucked his soul, and his mind checked out to be placed on the table for electronic stimulus. Attempts to break into his solitude are met with harsh words.
Again, this is an exaggeration for most people. It’s hard to check out this intensely, but we all do it to varying degrees. Some of it is electronic, some of it is a preloaded sense of annoyance for interactions with the ones we love.
It’s not healthy for us, and it’s not fair for the people who want to be with us or depend upon us.
Jobs, careers, are a means to an end, but it’s crucial that they not be dead ends for life. Only seeking AVC can lead to bitterness, resentment, and unhappiness that likes to come home with us like it does with Dave.
What did I see when I looked at my job for the reason I’d checked out like Dave? I was tired. Nothing had changed except the way I was looking at work because I was tired and needed a break.
What did I do?
I took a day off and readjusted my attitude about my job. My job wasn’t something awful and draining. My mind was making it seem that way.
These ideas are the keys to this exploration. They can be applied to every aspect of our lives to work towards bringing back enjoyment to the day to day tasks of our lives. It doesn’t matter how mundane they are or if they end up too much like work.
Those times between are where LIFE happens.
They are where we grow and change as people.
At work, we learn new things about ourselves, about others, and gain knowledge. It shapes us.
At home the lawn strengthens us, the laundry calms us, the kitchen invigorates us.
These things account for more of our lives than those sparing times we venture into the world of entertainment. They are the most common times we can use to find ways to enjoy our lives.
Live life for life, not for the weekends or moments of leisure. Each moment has as much value. It is up to you chose what virtue you assign to it.
How do you value life? Where does fun start and end?
I don’t expect much from this; it came as a whim and is posted on the same. If there’s any response I’ll put together a list of theoretical tasks and ways I’ve found to make them entertaining.
