Hard work

I missed yesterday's post, hung over from the day's hard work like after an all-night bender. Yesterday I landscaped for 10 hours, lost in four packs of multicolored johnny jump ups, pots of pink zinnias and scarlet geraniums. I wheeled compost from point a to b in an endless round of shovel, push, dump and repeat. I spread compost in a thin layer across the ground, dusted it across the top like cinnamon on coffee.

Last fall I promised myself (after a welcome layoff from another landscaping job) that I would only landscape in future as a favor to a friend or by the grace of having a yard to call my own. In this case, I get to help friends with a huge gardening project and take care of my own needs. Spring end into early summer, since most of my work follows a seasonal flow, tends to see a meager income. So, enter hard work doing whatever I can get my hands on, until the real summer tourist season in Jackson arrives on the Fourth of July.

There's a group of people, world over, who follow the tourist patterns as farmers do the growth cycle of plant and season. I became a part of this work force when I got a job at a ski area at twenty four. After, I became a raft guide, then a massage therapist. This cycle means make hay while the sun shines, and hope I've set aside money for the lean in between, aka the "off season." Work hard, long hours and six or seven days a week, eighth months out of the year, and repeat. I am a third of the year retiree and the rest a workaholic.

The first job I ever officially held was as a busser in the local, Hide-Away-Hills restaurant. I'd had others before, babysitter, odd job do-er, and working alongside my dad with his moving company, but this marked the first occasion I started to pay into social security and income taxes. Even though my dad, Al, has always reminded me to "work smarter, not harder" up to now I have lived by his example rather than his words. Al, who has surely driven various tractor trailers more than a million miles during his career, who has made his living humping (moving term for carry) household items up and down stairs, in and out of houses since his 30s, who has dealt with every weather, road and human condition, who taught me the Midwestern work ethic.

Here's something to consider: working hard, though it is an ideal in some parts of the world, and must be done simply to survive in many places, has helped me to survive, but not really thrive. I don't abhor hard work, there can be a rugged satisfaction in doing it, but most of this effort has been for the benefit of other people's business. If I give a large portion of my time and energy to a project, I'm ready for it to be work that is an expression of who I am, that reflects my vision.

For now, I've committed to a summer in the role of worker bee. I will give massages, landscape, cater, and play as hard as I work. And I will reserve some of the sweetness of the summer for this blog, which reflects the work I make a central role in my life and livelihood.

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