I started this blog in 2009 when I was off work due to a combination of factors.  Like many small businesses at the time, ours started skidding downhill so I stepped out to see if I could take some pressure off the business and get another job, and that took a while.  Shortly after that I started having some heart issues which now seem like a blip on the screen of my life, but which at the time were pretty serious.  I took the opportunity created by the downtime to write some memories and to comment on the political stuff that was happening at the time.  I really didn't have the know how or the desire to market the thing to anyone except my family, so I didn't ever accrue a following.

Now due to the Covid-19 epidemic and the social distancing edicts, etc. I’ve got downtime during the retirement that has frankly been a hoot for a couple of years.  (Hmmm?  Downtime in downtime—I’ll have to think about that a minute, could be a subject for later).  Anyway, I’ve decided to revive the thing, and I’ve decided to leave the old stuff up there for anyone who is bored as hell and doesn’t have a Kindle.  My first post is a replay of one I did earlier, and I might do some of that now and then because some of the stuff is still relevant, albeit dated. This one tells a few things about me, and might explain why I retired about as soon as I hit 65. I never did find work that didn't qualify as work.  Here goes:

Work

Disclaimer:  Work sucks!  There, I said it.  This is a cliché the use of which bothers me a great deal.  The problem is that there is no suitable substitute.  Any metaphor used to take its place is either inaccurate or ungainly.  Nothing matches “work sucks” for conciseness.  One alternative might be, “work is a prostate exam,” which is sexist, as would be, “work is like childbirth,” which is equally sexist, and woefully wrong because childbirth, although painful and difficult, is also (reportedly) satisfying.  This disqualifies it as a metaphor for work out of hand.



The June 1 issue of Newsweek has a piece that reviews two books on the subject of work.  One is The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, by Alain de Botton in which it is proposed that the American infatuation with work is yet another dogma handed down from pre-Revolutionary times and unique to America.  The notion that work is “fun” flies in the face of a conviction held for centuries that life, including work, is essentially miserable.  This conviction, according to the author, is a defense mechanism against disappointment.  The other book is Shop Class as Soulcraft, by Matthew B. Crawford.  This book extols the virtues of “working with your hands” which has the benefits of objective results, reduced stress, etc.  (More on this later:  much of this activity is also disqualified as work.)  I must admit that at this early date, I have not read either of these books, but I certainly will.  I have the time because I am the victim of a cruel irony—work sucks worst when you don’t have any.  This is a personal tragedy that only reinforces the evidence that our relationship with work is a perversion.



“Eureka!  Hallelujah!  Praise the Lord!, “ was my reaction after learning of these publications.  In reading one short essay, I was freed from self loathing as an unproductive, bitter reprobate slacker.  I was now on the forefront of contemporary thought—an avant-garde intellectual.  I can sense many of you stiffening and thinking, “What kind of communist anti-American bullshit is this?  I enjoy my work and derive great satisfaction from it, and so should you.”  Congratulations!  You don’t have a job and get paid anyway.  If you enjoy it, it ain’t work.  It’s entertainment, or sport, or mental exercise, or something—but not work.



The idea that work worship is uniquely American is verifiable by anyone who has ever tried to do business with almost any country in Christendom between mid-December, and mid-January.  The UK, South Africa, Australia, Italy, Belgium, and Brazil—all closed for the Christmas holiday.  Most companies do, however, have someone there to answer the phone and laugh at the American who thinks he actually has a need more pressing than selecting a Mediterranean beach.  We are universally regarded as a people that works too hard, too long, and at inappropriate times.  We take less vacation and work more hours when we are working than anyone I’m aware of.



Voltaire said, “Work keeps at bay three great evils:  boredom, vice, and need.”  This is an attitude born of the same Enlightenment that shaped American attitudes in the years leading up to our Revolution.  For some reason it did not stick in the minds of his French countrymen who are notoriously non-obsessed with work, perhaps because it is a load of crap.  Boredom is the very definition of work.  Work invites vice:  see white collar crime, our present financial crisis, and some of the history of organized labor.  The absurd idea that work allays need is contradicted by the fact that one of work’s primary rewards, money, drives our thirst for material gratification, and creates the “need” for more work.





An idea came up in a beer driven conversation with a former construction partner.  I don’t know whether it was an original thought that Josh had, or if he got it from someone else.  It seems a little deep for Josh, but beer does that.  Josh’s idea was that society ought to be set up so that we all just party and have a good time until we’re, say 55, and then work our asses off until we drop dead.  This idea warrants some consideration.  George Bernard Shaw said, “Youth is wasted on the young.”  I would agree, and add that work is imposed on the young.  Think of all the youthful creativity and energy wasted on the drudgery of “making a living”, when what we are really doing is making a slow death.  Think of the money that would be saved on health care for the aged.  If an old fart gets senile, he just stumbles in front of a bulldozer, and that’s it.   There would be no drawn-out humiliating existence in a care facility that takes up valuable resources and wastes the talent of nurses and doctors—no more images of emaciated, bed-ridden grandpas with sunken eyes and tubes going in and coming out.  The possibilities for societal improvement seem endless.  The economic stimulant implications are immense.  The young do not take the senior discount, and are less likely to skimp on tips.  Like most utopian solutions, this one has some flaws, but it should be in the conversation.



Another possible solution to the problem of work would be to increase pay based on the degree to which the work is disliked.  The obvious problem with this idea is that it probably wouldn’t change things for most people.  The office administrator who spends the day licking the shoes of some self-important personification of the Peter Principle would still make more than the house painter who will walk off the job and straight to the bar at the merest hint of bullshit from the boss, reeking of satisfaction all the way.  An even greater problem would be the need for some device for measuring discontent.  We certainly couldn’t just hand out money to the biggest whiners and starve the stoics.  There would have to be a brain implant, or a periodic test similar to the personality profile questionnaire you answer when you apply at Home Depot.



“No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”—Booker T. Washington:

This is, among other things, a paen to those who toil.  Toil is strenuous labor, but not necessarily work.  Work contains no dignity.  Some examples differentiating work from toil are in order.

·       Building fence is great sport:  outside, physical, yet requires some craft—straight, square, etcetera—immediately tangible results, and can be done while having a few beers.  There are many “puttering around the house” activities that are good rewarding fun. Some are not.

·       Plumbing under the sink sucks, and qualifies easily as work.

·       Fixing cars made before about 1980 can be fun.  Working on any car that has the engine in there sideways sucks.  If you look through the engine compartment and see the ground, there is potential for some entertainment.  If the compartment is so packed with shit that not even light can escape, you have a black hole, which sucks in the literal and figurative sense.

·       Sales, which I have done most of my life now, sucks—rejection, disappointment, catering to assholes, motels, fast food, or no food, and windshield time.

·       Mining was a kick and didn’t become work until it made me sick.  It was a little kid’s dream—playing with giant Tonka Toys, blowing stuff up, unrestrained cussing, and a great espirit de corps.

·       Writing a poem does not suck.

One of the triumphs in my life of toil came during a summer stint at the lumber mill in Walden, Colorado.  The mill superintendant was the father of a classmate.  Kent was one of the class athletes-- good at football and wrestling.  Let's just say I wasn't.  I suspect he and his dad thought it would be entertaining to watch me perform in exceptionally difficult circumstances.  Dad put me to work sorting slabs and flitches on the head rig.

When a log went through the initial process after debarking, it was ripped lengthwise into flat segments (flitches) that would eventually become boards.  Making a round log square necessarily leaves four “slabs”, which are the ugly outside segments that have jagged limb stubs sticking out, and are often warped, hard to manage, and always pointed on the lead end.  When the ripped log shot onto a chain conveyor, my job was to, by any means necessary, get the slabs the hell off the conveyor and let the future lumber go by.  I stood facing the onslaught and dodged lumber while grabbing slabs and flinging them onto a conveyor going another direction.  I was aided in this by a high speed roller called “the pineapple” because it had beads welded around for traction on the slabs.  The pineapple would grab anything that touched it and shoot it about 20 feet.  My position was on a little platform right in front of the pineapple, and I became a virtual ballerina on that deck, dodging and slinging in a rhythm matching the output of the saw, and all the time avoiding getting grabbed by that spinning pineapple.

Kent was doing a much more dignified job in the same area of the mill, and was in position to watch me all day.  After about a week and a half, Kent said, “You know Grant; I’ve got to tell you I didn’t think you’d make it this long.  We usually give that job to winos and bums because we know they won’t be here long.  They almost always take a ride on that pineapple and don’t show up the next day.”  I think I gained some respect after that—from Kent, and certainly from myself.  I quit two days later and went to the mine for an extra 25 or 30 cents an hour.

Now that was good, wholesome, make me dog-assed tired, toil.  And I’d go back to it in a heartbeat if I still had any ballerina in me.  I know some women who get turned on by the smell of pine pitch and diesel fuel.