What is work?

What is work, and is it good for me? These are great questions. I pat myself on the back for asking them, like I asked my 7th grade science teacher “What is time,” to the rolling of eyes of everyone else in the classroom. I only had a small crush on him.

Work requires effort and has an output. It is done for reasons aside from the work itself — it is done for the benefit of whatever happens after it’s done. The dishes become clean, the email becomes sent, the bug becomes fixed.

Effort done for its own sake is entertainment.

I cannot answer whether work is good for me. That is like asking “Are drugs good for me?” Some are, and some aren’t. Antibiotics can heal me. Chemotherapy would make me much sicker, because I do not have cancer.

So when I said, yesterday, that “Work sucks,” I do not mean the abstract concept of effort applied with the hope of a specific result. Tomorrow we’ll explore what I do mean. This is a cliffhanger.