No play

Work for a living. Off to work. Work for food. Working for the man. Whatever works. And my favorite from Mel Brooks: Work, work, work.

Work comes in dozens of forms, and it generally refers to some type of labor in the verb form (Work your fingers to the bone). The noun form can also mean labor (Too much work), or the result of labor (My work is finished). Sometimes the verb doesn’t mean specifically labor (The lock on my car door doesn’t work), but you can bet that when the verb is used that way it means you’ll have to expend labor (I’d love to have a beer with you, but I have to work on my car door).

The worst kind of work is the kind that interrupts other work. For example, I really wanted to go down to my workshop yesterday and work on a project – a work in progress I’m eager to finish – but I couldn’t because I had to work. I was hoping if I got to work early and worked hard on the work I had to do, that I might be able to work in some woodworking time later.

Unfortunately, as I looked out the window I could see that the yard needed work. Should’ve worked on it on Saturday, but I couldn’t. Had too much work to do. Now the grass was an inch taller than it should be, and I had a hard time trying to get my old mower to work its way through that thick mess. Of course, the work took twice as long to finish all the mowing, trimming, sweeping – the whole works. By then, it was time to work on dinner.

It was all one convoluted work chain wherein much was accomplished, but it just didn’t work out that I made it to the shop: I wanted to do some woodworking, but my work got in the way. That work had to be set aside to do lawn work, which in turn ate up so much time that I couldn’t get back to the original work, and instead had to work in the kitchen. In short, by the end of the day I was three levels away from the work I had been dreaming about doing at the beginning of the day.

Sometimes, no matter how hard you work at it, it just isn’t workable.

No wonder Jack’s a dull boy.

Till next time,

A.J.