Work is a tricky thing. It's such an easy thing to complain about: "I've got so much work to do" or "I wish I didn't have to go to work today." Work is that thing you do to earn money so that you can have a place to live and food to eat. But if those needs were just taken care of for us, we'd still work. We would find something to do because as pleasant as it is to watch TV all day sometimes, we need to do things that engage us mentally and physically and encourage us to learn new things and expand our personal world. So on that basic level, work is a good and necessary thing.

I've been thinking about work a lot lately, both in the "I don't want to go to work today" sense and in the "things I love to work on" sense. As I've said, it's going to be a busy semester. I have always shied away from being busy. I get overwhelmed pretty easily and it's hard for me to be busy all the time. I start feeling pretty bad if I don't have enough downtime. At the same time, I see people who are doing a lot and I know they've got the same number of hours in their day as I do (unless they don't sleep... that's it! Everyone else is a robot!), but they've somehow figured out how to accomplish things. What are they doing that I'm not?

I think I'm finally starting to figure out the mysterious thing called productivity. Would have been nice to do this years ago, when I first started college, but I'll take what I can get. For me, productivity might just be about not having to do things. I shall explain. I've never had a problem getting things done for school. Yes, I procrastinate and worry but I've always gotten projects done and turned in on time. So for a while I thought that deadlines are what it took to motivate me. Now I don't think it's necessarily the case.

I know that there are some things I'm pretty good at. I'm a decent writer and a decent photographer. I've done sewing and knitting and crocheting. I've learned a little guitar, and I can build websites. I'm not humble enough to deny that I'm a fairly talented person, at least in the sense that I can learn how to do a lot of things, and I'll probably be decently good at them.

But more often than not, I don't do them. I watch TV or read or do whatever else it is that I do that isn't Productive. And since I know that I'm capable of doing so much, I feel guilty for not doing any of it. The guilt makes me feel like there must be something wrong with me because I'm not doing any of those things. Then I just start feeling depressed, and it's very difficult to get anything done when I'm depressed, and there we are again.

So I'm making a change. I'm deciding that I am not obligated to anyone to do anything. Of course this isn't true--I have to go to my job and I have to attend class and do my schoolwork. But as far as everything else is concerned, I don't have to do it. No one is making me write or design my website. So if I don't want to, I don't have to. Certainly if it makes me unhappy because it makes me feel too busy, I have no reason to feel guilty about just not doing it. No energy to do anything except play World of Warcraft after getting my schoolwork done? Then all I'm doing that evening is playing World of Warcraft. And that's okay.

Sounds simple, but it's a new way of thinking for me. I haven't mastered it yet, and I still kind of feel bad that I was technically up early enough to do some writing this morning, but I was really sleepy and ended up just sitting and drinking tea and reading. But I'll tell myself that it was okay.

Now the problem with this way of thinking is that I might just end up not doing anything. I don't think that'll happen, though. Perhaps I will spend all my free time relaxing sometimes, but as I said earlier, work is necessary and satisfying. I think that as long as I continue being honest with myself, I'll be able to do things because I truly want to do them, instead of because I think I should.

Let's see how I do.