Sunday, January 22, 2012

Labor


Tomorrow, back to the grind of work that means nothing, that adds nothing, that keeps me busy while reducing me to a factory worker without personality or mind, and desperately unhappy.  I fault my bosses for making it thus, when before I was at least content, making my own rules, respecting the work as worthy of me, and I of it.

Personally, I have nothing against work, particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else.  —Barbara Ehrenreich, "Goodbye to the Work Ethic" (1988), in The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed (1991)
Vitam perdidi laboricose agendo. 
I have spent my life laboriously doing nothing.
—quoted by Grotius on his death bed
“On your deathbed you’re not going to say ‘I wish I’d spent more time at the office.’”
—my doctor


image:  Sisyphus, Titian 



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