Learn to love the work
I have not been blogging much lately. I do not feel particularly bad about that, because I have been extremely productive recently. It feels as if a lot of things in my life, both professional and personal, are falling into place. I'm trying to savor that, because I know it will not always be like this. Life happens.
I've decided today to put off some of the other productive things I've been doing to write this post about a shift in mindset that has been years in the making. This relatively new mindset is part of a little collection of mantras I repeat to myself on a near-daily basis. The central mantra: "Learn to love the work."
To me this is not about a "grindset mindset" or any such job-venerating nonsense. It's more a recognition that doing laundry, washing the dishes, grocery shopping, walking the dogs, applying for jobs, and paying the bills is just a part of life. You may notice that for me a lot of those tasks are household chores I used to loathe, rather shamefully. I approached them with such negativity that I didn't realize the extent to which I was immiserating myself and making it harder to do those all-too-common maintenance tasks.
This goes way back. As a kid I was rarely required to do those tasks myself, and I don't know if there would have been a way to make them easier for me to stomach back then. For so long I had a mindset that all of this maintenance was getting in the way of real living. A memory I keep returning to is playing Zoo Tycoon 2 (a simulation game where you manage a zoo) and being so annoyed that the fences would break. In life it was frustrating enough to have to pick my clothes up off the floor, but in a game wasn't I supposed to be having fun? Why did I need to fix things? I want to go back and talk to that kid and say, "This is what you do! This is life! If you don't like it, then maybe you shouldn't be playing a simulation game in the first place."
Now I approach these tasks and tell myself that all the little things I do to keep the ship running are an act of love, for myself and my partner. Maybe I've performed some grand trick on myself, convincing myself I can wash the dishes with gusto. But even if it is a trick, I'd rather go into the work with this attitude than any other.
I was finally prompted to write this post because I had just started reading a book recommended to me almost four years ago now: The Second Shift, by Arlie Russell Hochschild. It was recommended as the single book I should read on sociology if I read anything at all, and now that I've started it I can see why. It discusses how straight couples (fail to) navigate an equitable distribution of housework. I don't think it surprises anyone that in heterosexual couples, men often fail to pull their weight. They tend to take more leisure time, drink more, and interact with their children less than their partners do. As the author points out, more leisure time is a bad bargain when it fosters resentment in a marriage. No one goes into a relationship intending to blow it up. But so many men, especially in decades past, have not seen housework as a requirement on their end, or they delude themselves into thinking they do more of it than they actually do. The consequences are especially alarming when it comes to fathers' relationships with their children, where they neglect the work of putting their kids to bed, bathing them, and feeding them. Instead, fathers opt in to the fun, not-always-essential activities — taking their kids to the zoo, playing games with them — as if that makes up for all the other things children require, which it obviously does not!
I refuse to be that type of partner, or that type of father to my future kids. I don't want to be a good partner by comparison to other men. I want to be a good partner, period. Since the book was written so long ago, I wanted to see where the research currently stands. Things have become more equitable, but there is still a lot of work to be done. A growing part of that research focuses on how women still take on the bulk of the planning in relationships: the invisible cognitive work that men tend to do much less of. That stung a bit, because I find it true in my own relationship. Though I do some, I let far too much of the planning fall on my partner. I have a lot of work left to do there.
"Learn to love the work" includes cognitive work, and with some effort I think I can get better at carrying my share of it. It'll be good for me and good for all my relationships.
I keep on thinking about that kid, annoyed that the fences in his zoo kept breaking. Someone tell him that the fences always break! For too long I wanted to do only the fun part and perform none of the cleanup — the kind of partner and father who shows up for the zoo trips and skips the bedtimes. I'd rather be the one keeping the place standing: doing the planning, carrying the invisible cognitive work, repairing the fences before they fall down. That is the work I am committing to learning to love.