I Live to Work — And
No, I Don't Want to be Lectured About It
Right now, it’s 3:38 a.m. I have a glass of iced peppermint tea (read also: liquid crack cocaine) to my right, and my Lucy cat to the right, curled into a tight ball, her eyes tiny slits against the light of my lamp.
I’ve had a dream. Not in a Martin Luther King, Jr. way, mind you. I’m not that much of a big thinker so early in the morning. But a dream about copywriting. (If you’re falling asleep in the back, I promise not to rap your knuckles with a large ruler, the numbers fading and rendering it nothing more than a very big and flat stick.)
Waking, I knew I had to write. I had to get it down on paper before it dissolved into the dawn, pulling on a shirt and tucking myself into the fake leather egg chair that serves both as a seat and a hug for my butt.
“You either live to work, or work to live.”
Judging by the inflection of the person speaking, the correct answer is always and obviously the second option. Work is just means to a life. A terrible passing of the time that sucks away our happiness until we can do what fills us up.
The thing is, I live to work. I liiiiiiive to woooooork. I think about writing in the shower. I build marketing strategies on the drive to my niece’s fifth birthday party, one hand on top of the gift bag so the tissue paper doesn’t whip out the window with the wind. I wake up at 3:38 a.m., ready to write, because I’m too excited about being awake that sleep hasn’t come too easy these days.
It’s not about the money — though, yeah — being able to buy fancy cheeses sometimes is a welcomed reprieve from hacking off the top of a can of cold Spaghetti-Os. It’s not about running after something that’s missing, nearly always out of grasp. It’s not about distracting myself from an issue I need to deal with. And it sure as hell isn’t about proving myself.
It’s about chasing art.
The best art. Consistently and creatively. While I feel like I need to put a crisp tenner in the douchebag jar for even letting that phrase free of its dog crate, typing it out gives me a serious case of the warm and fuzzies deep in my gut.
Before I get written off as yet another idealistic millennial, (though yeah, I’m relatively rosy about things), I've gotta say: I've had my share of absolutely terrible jobs. Cold calling and selling fake $40,000 college degrees to people on food stamps, squeezing dogs’ anal glands for minimum wage, tossing pizzas. And some not so terrible jobs, like government finance and (the best of the best), apprenticing under a damn marketing wizard.
And all this has catalyzed me to start my own business. To plant a flag — and a desk — in my living room and set up shop so I can help people have the strong, growing businesses they deserve. (Because they do deserve them.)
Since then, it’s all shifted. It’s no longer about doing the bare minimum, but about baring my guts to watching eyes and hoping I can leave my corner of the universe just a little better than I found it. About really digging holes into the details, removing the dirt and letting new tidbits of beauty seep in. About trying — with gritted teeth and a finely-honed top knot — to be my own inspiration, for a change.
I know I’m supposed to commiserate about my career. Put my head in my hands, rub my temples as I kick off my kitten heels at the bar and order another dry martini. (And for the record, there are of course those days.) But 96.8% of the time, I’d rather be cultivating the creations that make me feel like maybe I’m contributing something sort of worthwhile to the world.
I, Jessica Manuszak, live to work, and my business is an enormous, unextractable part of my happiness. I’m happy. I’m happy. (Am I even allowed to say that?) The novelty of such a messy, complex rush of elation hasn't — as of yet — worn off.
