The real work

We each get to decide what our life’s calling is. (Library of Congress)

Now that I’ve completed a project that I’ve been busy with for a decade, I can see myself making the same mistake I counsel others against.

I keep thinking that I will get to the end of my to-do list and have time for my new project.

I’m supporting clients. I’m overseeing all of the important administrative details of my daily existence. I’m working through a somehow self-propagating list of tasks associated with my existing projects.

I’m treating all of these things as “the real work” and the new project as nothing more than a far-off dream. However, I want to accomplish anything on the new project, I need to reverse that. The new project is the real work.

I can tell you that if I didn’t treat this blog like real work, it would not get written. Instead, I set aside eight hours a week for it.

And until I set aside an hour per week for it, my bookkeeping didn’t get treated like real work either.

I schedule time for my meetings with clients. I must schedule time for meetings with myself in the same way. I have to prioritize the time for working on my new project, even when I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to spend that time.

If I do this, it will get done. If I don’t, it never will. That’s the way it goes.

Of course, if the time to set aside doesn’t exist, I will have to let something else go. For the past several months, I’ve been so busy with The Little Middle School and other pursuits that I was, indeed, unable to add anything.

But now that The Little Middle School has closed, I can envision my time filling up with random things unless I make the intentional decision to make space for my new project.

There’s something soothing about work that someone else has asked us to do. The decision has already been made for us — we show up and follow through on our obligation. It has a deadline and accountability — it feels real.

I wish that were enough for me, but I dream of more. I know that I share with many other people the nagging sense of having something else that I’m on this planet to contribute. As the time ticks by, I can’t just resign myself to the status quo, even though that might be the logical choice.

Postponing the longed-for dream has its appeal: The project stays pristine and perfect. I don’t have to change, and I don’t have to do the hard, scary stuff. But when the pain of waiting overcomes the fear, I have to act.

So if I have this thing that will not let me go, I have to respect it and honor it and make time for it. I’m the only one who can give myself permission to do that. No one else will know any different I don’t, but it’s important to me in the meantime. Someday, it might amount to something that will matter to someone else. I can never know for sure, but I might as well try it and see what happens.

The dream comes true from the most humble beginnings: blocking out time on the calendar, doing the planning, and putting tasks on the to-do list as I figure out what they are. The workday isn’t done until this work is complete. I’m not getting paid for it and I’m accountable only to myself, but it’s mine, it’s important, and it’s real.