"It's About The Work" Day

Today is Labor Day in the United States. Originally, this holiday was a day to celebrate trade and labor organizations. In modern times, it appears to be more about the "end of summer,” the beginning of the NFL football season, and how hard we work all year round.

However, the concept of “how hard we work” is tied too much to our employer. When it fact, our jobs are not the only thing that keep us working hard all year

We work hard with kids, parents, spouses, partners, homes, lawns, cars, bikes, bank accounts, blogs, friends, networks, social media outlets, schooling, training, food, exercise, vacations, entertainment, government, communities, neighborhoods, volunteering and anything else that supplies us with no compensation.
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Yet it's all work. Sometimes it is hard work. Sometimes it is easy. Sometimes it is obvious. Sometimes it is not so obvious.

To my last point, take for example this story. On the plane to San Juan two days ago, a. gentleman asked me, “how do the bathrooms work?” Sensing he was genuine in his inquiry and noting there was no language barrier, I had a difficult time answering his question. I tried. However, my words were not the matching the advice he needed.

His situation was he had not been on a plane before and he believed he needed knowledge to use the bathroom. He thought it was work. I tried to communicate to him what I thought he needed to know. However, what I said was not working. Feeling the conversation was too much work, I walked away. Nevertheless, I walked away feeling confident judging by his age he would do just fine.

Yet feeling fine is something that has escaped me. I am sitting here working, writing this blog post. I am writing despite that I am on vacation and I vowed to do no blog writing this week. My plan was to have guest writers take over for the week. This has not changed. What changed was the timetable for posting them. It changed because I did not work hard enough last week to arrange this.

Because I like this blog to work under the premise there will be regular posts, I am filling in the gap and doing the work myself. Because I want this, sometimes I have to do some extra work. But I am fine with this. It is as the tag line at the top says, “it's about the work.”

In celebration of Labor Day, and all the work you do all year, cut yourself a break. Do something fun and do not work too hard at it. Enjoy your It's About The Work Day. I am going back to my vacation.