Tag: Work

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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A couple of months ago I went back to my alma mater in Colorado. They gave me a little temporary office, and as I went upstairs I thought, Oh, my God, I used to live here. The room next to the room they gave me was my bedroom from a fraught year in my college experience. It was the weirdest thing, because that guy that I was was so ambitious and stupid, so not in touch with how one went about having a writing life. But he was pretty earnest. There was something very wild about being almost 70 and standing there and going, OK, so what that kid wanted to do, you kind of did it. I can’t quite describe it. Also, I started late. The first book didn’t come out till I was 38, so I feel like I’m racing to do really good work in whatever time is left. But in that early time, one of the things that was so beautiful was that my stupid dreams of being a prodigy were obviously not going to happen. So for the first time it was like, All right, what if you don’t have any writing career? What if you’re just, hopefully, a good father and husband? And in that space I found that there was plenty to live for. I’d always secretly thought I was kind of shallow, that I was all ambition. And to find out that shorn of that, I still liked being alive and still felt a lot of happiness? That was very sweet.

— George Saunders, from “George Saunders is No Saint (Despite What You May Have Heard)” by David Marchese (NY Times, January 10, 2026)

5:00 PM Bell!

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From here she could see a whole teeming mass…running about the city like ants, all dedicated to the same pointless task. She stepped back. It felt good to escape above, free of the noise… “It’s lovely here,” she said.”

Go now. Find your peace… Let your mind wander. Skim like a dragonfly over the pool of your consciousness and let go… you can quiet your mind.

— R.F. Kuang, Katabasis: A Novel (William Morrow, August 26, 2025)

Notes:

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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[…] Whether it’s coding, cooking or gardening, people intrinsically desire to achieve excellence at their craft.

This desire to build, create and get more competent at something is why Benjamin Franklin taught himself to write by translating magazine articles into poetry and then back into prose. It’s why Bill Bradley taught himself to dribble a basketball by taping cardboard to the bottom of his glasses so he had to rely more on intuition than on sight. It’s why Marcel Proust rewrote portions of “Remembrance of Things Past” from his death bed. Even while in agony, breathing his last breath, he wanted his work to be better, to get it right.

When you see people ensconced in their craft, you’ll notice that they are often living what I’ve come to think of as a Zone 2 life, after the exercise trend. They are not manic; they are persistent. They’re not burning out with frantic energy, but they are just plowing their furrow, a little bit farther, day after day.
They live with an offensive spirit. They are drawn by some positive attraction, not driven by a fear of failure. They perceive obstacles as challenges, not threats. On their good days, they’ve assigned themselves the right level of difficulty. Happiness is usually not getting what you want or living with ease; it is living, from one hour to the next, at a level of just manageable difficulty.

By the time you’ve reached craftsman status you don’t just love the product, you love the process, the tiny disciplines, the long hours, the remorseless work. You may want to be a rock star, but if you don’t love the arduous process of making music and touring, you won’t succeed. The craftsman has internalized knowledge of the field so she can work by intuition, using her repertoire of moves, relying on hunches, not rules. W.H. Auden captured it perfectly:

You need not see what someone is doing
to know if it is his vocation,
you have only to watch his eyes:
a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon
making a primary incision,
a clerk completing a bill of lading,
wear the same rapt expression,
forgetting themselves in a function.
How beautiful it is,
that eye-on-the-object look.

— David Brooks, from “A Surprising Route to the Best Life Possible” (NY Times, March 25, 2025)

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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In this astonishing world, music itself raced through the morning stillness and, in a flash, was gone.

— Riku Onda, Honeybees and Distant Thunder (Translated by Philip Gabriel) (Pegasus Books, May 2, 2023)

DK photo at twilight this very chilly morning. See more pictures from this morning’s walk here.

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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Whether we realize it or not, even when we are alone, off the clock, doing whatever the hell we want, the Protestant work ethic and its pressure to be productive are still with us. Imagined audiences are with us. The yoke of should is a heavy one, and it can weigh down even the things we love. The message that a hobby is the best way to spend one’s free time is also a message about what you should value most in life: hard work, achievement, productivity. Those aren’t bad things, but are they really more important than relationships, contemplation, and rest? Hanging out with your friends, caring for your family, enjoying creature comforts, replenishing your energy—these may not make for a unique fun fact to whip out at parties, but they are good for the soul.

— Julie Beck, from “How Hobbies Infiltrated American Life” (The Atlantic, January 3, 2022)

Photo: Luis Quintero