Is there room for love in work?
A girl cries on the train because she feels seen.
The feeling begins in my chest and expands outwards as if the tears are coming from some deep, cavernous place inside of me.
The feeling warps time and space; I feel wobbly and seasick with emotion.
I’m about to cry on the train.
* * *
The line between Norwich and Manchester has always been one of my favourites because it holds so many memories for me;
Travelling to see a boy I’d met once before, convinced I was irrevocably in love with him.
Journeying to meet a client who would become an irreplaceable mentor and role model for my writing career.
But this time feels different. I’m not crying because of a person, I’m crying because of something I read:
“Your life should be an ongoing search for love. Sometimes high performance will flow from your love, and sometimes it won’t. But in all cases, more love in your life means a fuller life.” Marcus Buckingham, Love + Work.
When I bought this book, my partner laughed.
“Only you would choose to read a book about work for fun.”
He’s right. I’m obsessed with work. Not the work itself, but my relationship with it. And perhaps using romantic language to talk about work seems crass. But we all have a relationship with work – that much is undeniable.
I’ve always been a little too emotionally invested in what I do for money. I talk about my clients as if they’re age-old friends (and truthfully, many of them are). I get a touch of heartbreak when contracts come to a close.
This isn’t something I express often. But Love + Work confirmed my quietly held belief that love is essential for work. And that there’s plenty of room for love in it.
“If you love doing something, anything—organizing, writing, designing, challenging, teaching—and you are prevented from doing it, then your life starts to feel wrong. It might feel to you like frustration. It might feel like anger, or depression, or confusion.
You sitting on the couch crying to yourself and not knowing why. You finding yourself short-tempered and impatient, pushing away those who want to help you. You walking around in a brain fog, wondering where all the creativity and quick-wittedness went.”
After all, isn’t love a kind of work?
If you really love something, you work at it. That’s why I’m learning to accept sending an imperfect project to a client, so I get to finish my day on time and cook with my partner (or at least do the dishes).
Because however much I love doing a good job, I like dancing in the kitchen with my partner even better.
Now that AI can bash out blogs, robots dominate the factory floor, and automation can take on tedious tasks, surely there’s room for love in work? Surely by 2023, the only work we should be doing is that which makes use of our deepest loves?
I’ve exhausted my friends and family with my ruminations. When I tell them I want to love my work more, it’s always some variation of the same reply:
‘Life is about more than work.’
‘You shouldn’t just be looking for meaning from work.’
‘Work is work. It’s not life.’
There’s truth in all of those statements. But work still makes up a significant part of our lives. We spend more time on it than we do with our friends and families. So is it so ridiculous that I want to feel as much love as I possibly can from work?
* * *
I don’t often cry at fiction – I mostly read horrors, and those play on a different set of emotions.
But I do cry when something when I read something that reassures me I’m not alone in my thinking. Like Marcus Buckingham, I just want a life filled to the brim with love. And that includes what I do at my desk.
~ Ebony-Storm x
The resource section
📚 My top recommendation this month is, of course, Love + Work. It’s a surprisingly practical guide to identifying your loves, or as author Marcus Buckingham calls them, ‘red threads’, and turning those loves into contributions. It’s my new bible. 10/10.
✍️ My newly beloved author Marcus Buckingham is also the cocreator of Clifton Strengths, and creator of the StandOut assessment. I’ve done both and can attest to them as useful tools for identifying your strengths. StandOut is free, and you can do it in about 30 minutes. I’m a Provider-Stimulator – reply to this newsletter with your results!
💻 A couple of weeks back I went on a coding course – and surprised myself with how much I loved it. Tech Educators’ 101 bootcamp is a fantastic introduction to coding, for less than £20. You can attend in person (UK-wide) or online, and fully-funded spaces for their full-stack bootcamp are still available.