Good Tired

Do what you love, and you’ll never work another day in your life.

You’ve heard the saying before. You’ve seen it on a mug or desk calendar. You may have even repeated it to yourself after a particularly hard day. But … is it true? I recently had a conversation where I expressed how adamantly I find this statement to be false. Or, at the very least, misleading.

Most of my readers know that I was scuba instructor (How do you know there’s a scuba instructor in the room? They’ll tell you!). I LOVED that job. Diving was the first thing in my life I felt was truly mine - that made me feel capable - that made me feel brave - that made me feel like I was someone else than everyone thought. If I’m being honest, it may still be the only thing in my life that feels truly mine. The fact that I got to do it as job?! In Honduras?! Surrounded by sharks and dolphins!? DREAM JOB. So, why am I not writing to you from some exotic location, fresh off a boat?

I was doing what I loved, but it was work. To be more specific, it was long, hard, work. Everyday. It was exhausting and, a lot of times, thankless. Physically and mentally drained was how I ended most days. Tired. Still, I loved it. So I chose it, for a period in my life. My choice to move on from instructing had nothing to do with how much I loved diving. It was actually the opposite - I loved diving so much that when it started feeling heavy I fiercely knew I needed to protect it. When it got too heavy, I needed to move on from it. At least for a little while, so I could re-approach it from a different place.

My point, one that I didn’t realize at the time, but can recognize now - hindsight and yadda yadda - is that doing what you love is work. Important work. It’s ridiculous to think otherwise. It’s careless to think otherwise. I think it can be harmful advice for someone trying to find their way. And I’m not just talking about career work - I’m talking about life work, relationship work, growth work.

What’s important, and admittedly much harder, is to understand what’s worth the work. Because not everything will be. I find myself unhappiest not when the work is too hard, but when the the the work is no longer in alignment with what’s best for me, when I’ve outgrown what I was chasing, or when I’ve tunnel-visioned into a goal that I never really wanted in the first place but thought I should. When it gets heavy. Weight can be a good thing, it helps us grow. But when the weight is too much to be beneficial for growth, it instead fractures and breaks. “Loving” something or not often has nothing to do with the worth. There have been many paths, goals, relationships that I have felt deep love or care for - but the work felt too heavy, too often. I was too tired.

So how do you know what’s worth the work? It’s tough. And I don’t think it’s something that’s always easily identifiable. I can’t answer it for you and you can’t answer it for me. I think sometimes we end up putting in more work into something than we should for whatever reason - or, on the other side of that - we give up on something too soon because we didn’t want to prioritize the work, or we didn’t want to do the hard work at all. We can’t define it by success or failure, because working for things that are worth it involve both. So, again, how can we know if we’re heading down the right path, or if we’re at the end of the road?

I took a class on leadership at Harvard last year, and they played us a clip from Harry Chapin that has stuck with me and had been on my mind lately. I think maybe he was on to something.

“My grandfather was a painter. He died at age eighty-eight, he illustrated Robert Frost’s first two books of poetry, and he was looking at me and he said, “Harry, there’s two kinds of tired. There’s good tired and there’s bad tired.” He said, “Ironically enough, bad tired can be a day that you won. But you won other people’s battles; you lived other people’s days, other people’s agendas, other people’s dreams. And when it’s all over, there was very little you in there. And when you hit the hay at night, somehow you toss and turn; you don’t settle easy.

It’s that good tired, ironically enough, can be a day that you lost, but you don’t even have to tell yourself because you knew you fought your battles, you chased your dreams, you lived your days and when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy, you sleep the sleep of the just and you say ‘take me away’”. He said, “Harry, all my life I wanted to be a painter and I painted; God, I would have loved to have been more successful, but I painted and I painted and I’m good tired and they can take me away.” Harry Chapin

Work is work. Career growth is work. Being a woman in the workforce is work. Being a human in the workforce is work. Having ambition is work. Having vision is work. Failing is work. Starting over is work. Emotions are work. Communication is work. Misunderstandings are work. Apologies are work. Meeting in the middle is work. Family is work. Friendships are work. Relationships are work.

We have to choose what work is worth it, and how hard we want to work for what we choose.

“There's a saying that if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. At Apple, I learned that's a total crock. You'll work harder than you ever thought possible, but the tools will feel light in your hands.” Tim Cook

What work, relationships, and goals make the tools feel lighter in your hands? That’s the good kind of tired.

Listen to Harry’s speech hear: Good Tired