What Time? Which Work?

As on so many other occasions, I keep saying “I don’t have time.”

Untrue. I have time. I allocate time. I make choices. I spend time and I pay attention and yet these are not exclusively economic transactions. There is always more going on behind the scenes, beneath the surface.

Technically, I don’t have the time to spend writing this post but I am doing it anyway. Look at my tweets on this Sunday morning:

And because the article about the struggle against meaninglessness and precarity in what we call “work” resonated so strongly, I reached out to the friend and colleague who placed it in my path, Paul Prinsloo (@14prinsp) who responded with the following:

So, as my Austrian friend used to joke: “What learns us this?”

In the time that I have, this is the work that I choose to do. It is the work of connecting, of sharing, of contemplating, of wondering.

It is work of the head and also very much of the heart. It is work that matters to me and my community. This is work immersed in call and response. This is work which has meaning but generates no income of its own accord.

Creating caring, critical networks is not the work which demands grit. This is not a struggle of one against all the odds. No, this is shared labor, unscheduled meaning-making, stream of conscious systems thinking. We’re not out to beat anything or anyone – but to nudge, push and engage each other in the process of dialogue that leads to better thinking, wider options, to wise reframing of solutions.

So yeah. I am not writing my report card comments like I thought I would this morning. Instead, I’m doing this: My work mixed in with other people’s work.

That is satisfying – a fine way to spend my time and attention.