What you love doing, and what you don’t, might co-exist in the same job.
Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash
He couldn’t believe I was passing up sex to go back to my room and write. He said, “You honestly think you’ll make the New York Times bestseller list?” But my abrupt departure wasn’t about that. It was about the idea that’d just splashed into my head. If I didn’t dress and go write immediately, then I’d lose the inspiration.
Luckily, we were staying in the same hotel. Only a short elevator ride separated me from my beloved laptop.
I’ve only skipped sex for writing twice. What I mean — I’ve only been that excited about my craft a couple of times in my life.
Other days, I catch a flash of inspiration if I’m lucky. Usually, I have to turn the crank for a little while to get the engine running.
But plenty of days — and this especially includes teaching — I just don’t want to do the work. I’m not having a midlife crisis. I’m not burned out. I don’t need to join a startup. Or invest in crypto. Although sometimes I wonder. No, like the rest of humanity, part of me’s a hopeless couch potato.
I’ve learned not to make any major life or career changes based on how I feel about the first five or ten minutes of anything.
The first few minutes usually suck. I’m not talking about the easy things. I mean the hard things. The things worth doing. The first five minutes of my favorite shows fucking rock. They never suck. I watch them every day. But nobody pays me to watch TV. Sad.
Even *that *would eventually feel like work. Like good ol’ Billy Shakes wrote, “If all the year were playing holidays; to sport would be as tedious as to work.” Look at me, finally incorporating inspirational quotes into my blog posts. Bet you never expected that.
Back in high school, I used to dread track practice. But I loved running. I ran varsity. Went to state finals. Never won. But, hey. You don’t always have to place first to win.
I’ve never been a morning person. But sometimes you have to fake it. So I fell out of bed and tugged on my running shorts at 6 am five days week. Waited in the cold pre-dawn air for my ride.
Warm-ups were brutal. The first five minutes of every run overflowed with doubt. My legs felt like clogged toilets. The wind cut through my skin to my bones. My blood oozed through my veins like sludge. But something in me knew that if I could last five minutes, though, I’d be okay.
That basic idea’s gotten me through my entire life.
It’s always puzzled me how much I’ve hated the first five minutes of things I generally love.
Teaching, for instance. There’s no job on earth I’d rather do. And yet half the time I’d much prefer to sit and play on my phone than lead a class discussion. A few years ago, it was “Angry Birds.” Now it’s Twitter.
But it only takes five minutes of teaching to remind me that I like my profession. I’m good at corrupting young minds. I’m in the right place.
I’m nowhere near famous. But I’m one of the lucky few who make a livable salary off reading and writing, and teaching other people how to do what I do. What a gift. You’d think I woke up every dawn singing.
Parts of my job are terrible. Imagine how much it sucks to copyedit a manuscript in a hotel the night after you’ve given a presentation and sat through a bunch of panels. Why? Because if you don’t, you know you’ll never get it done. But even that gets better after about ten minutes.
Reviewing manuscripts, another great example. Every time, I procrastinate. I tell myself, “God I have to review that submission for that journal.” But after five or ten minutes, I’m 100 percent into it.
When I first started teaching, I thought it was just a paycheck until my first book became an international bestseller. Or I won a MacArthur Genius award. Or a Guggenheim.
It took me a little longer to warm up to teaching. Five minutes, five days. Five weeks. Tiny difference.
Over drinks, I’d tell my elite friends, “Can you believe these sad children? They don’t even listen to NPR!”
But that’s when the epiphany bitch-slapped me. Oh, shit. They don’t listen to NPR. They need to, though. I can teach them. But I’ll have to charge.
So I started making my students listen to public radio. Read actual newspapers. Engage in intellectual discussions on important issues. Even stranger, some of them *thanked *me for it.
Oh my god, I was doing a public service. For money. And I actually kind of enjoyed it.
Years later, I still groan just like my students the night before class. I pull open my own syllabus and think, “Okay, what are we doing tomorrow?” I read over the week’s lessons and imagine my students sighing at the amount of assigned work. After a few minutes, I fold my arms on my desk and moan, “Why did I assign this much reading?”
That’s how my lesson planning always starts. Ten minutes later, my reason returns. Oh, it just *looked *like a lot of reading. But it was actually an interesting article. I look forward to hearing their thoughts tomorrow morning. Even if I wish I could sleep until noon.
Lesson — something you might dismiss might turn into something you love. Something intimately related to your passions.
Don’t just quit your day job. Maybe you can find a way to love it. Or change it into something you love. Or change yourself. Maybe you can combine a job you love, and one you think you don’t, into something that fits you perfectly. Even if you don’t always appreciate that fact.
Sometimes we think we hate what we’re doing. In fact, we might secretly love it. What a mind fuck.
