Nature of Work

Many of my peers talk about the value and meaning of the work they do - more often the lack thereof.  Read this beautiful poem about another way of looking at work and what it is good for

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

But the thing worth doing well done

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

I am definitely involved in work that is "common as mud". While it is easy to feel dissatisfied and even helpless that it is so, perhaps shaping it into something clean is the way to overcome that. In my world, that involves staring at data for extended periods of time, wrangling it much in the manner of pulling weeds from an overgrown yard and then staring at more to see if it tells me more than it first did. At some point, acquaintance grows into friendship and it may well tell me stories I could learn from. I can easily escape into this world completely. As the poet describes it:

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,

who do what has to be done, again and again.