DailyJim: When there is a thin line between life and work

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. This is the episode for Thursday, September 26, 2024. I'm just a little bit late. And today I want to talk about when there is a thin line between life and work.

So earlier today I went to the bookstore and sometimes I go just to check out the books. It kind of feels like a nice familiar place sometimes as well. And I was I was wearing my Make Music Not War t-shirt that I got from the project this year. And one of the people working at the bookstore was like, oh man, I like your shirt. And I said, oh, it's actually a project that I work on. And, oh really? And so I started telling him about, you know, 50 musicians and filmmakers from across Europe, eight countries in conflict come together and write songs and record songs and record music videos and perform on the streets and also perform in a concert like a in a bar, he's like wow man yeah like great work like keep up keep up the really good work oh yeah sure thanks man and then later i saw an old friend at the grocery store supermarket, and somebody used to go to high school with i think and we were talking and then we ended up talking about weddings and we ended up talking about how um.

Sometimes the wedding isn't going to be the same. If you've lost a parent, she's a woman, she lost her father a couple years ago, and so she wasn't as excited to get married because a lot of the main moments, I think, in the wedding are the father and the daughter. And so we talked about grief and how it's not something that seems to really end. A lot of people think that grief ends, but it's still there. The sadness will show up in all sorts of ways. The reflection on the loss will surprise us at different times throughout the rest of our lives. And so, yeah, and then I thought, hmm. I came home and I was thinking, that's my life. I'm just out at the bookstore. I'm talking with an old friend I haven't seen in a long time. But I'm still talking about Make Music Not War and the work. I'm still talking about how I believe strongly in the power of crying and feeling the sadness and how a lot of culture doesn't let us feel the sadness and how to almost fight against that element to fight for the ability to cry and fight for the ability to feel what we're feeling and the freedom to feel it. That's work, isn't it? Or is it life? But I spend, some people ask me a lot lot of times they're like, well, you really need to get better. Don't ask, they tell me. You need to get better at separating your life from your work. I'm thinking, but how? When my life or when my work is this, when my work is about communicating emotions, when my work is about showing up with more energy and aliveness.

Doesn't, isn't that still work if I'm doing it in a regular conversation with somebody? Or is it, is it work when a friend of mine texts me at three in the morning because they're on a different time zone and they're trying to figure out how to write a text message to the guy that they kind of broke up with, but realized that they really love and want to keep trying. And they wanted feedback on, well, how should I write this message? So they wrote one and I gave some feedback and then they wrote another, I gave some feedback. And then they wrote a few more, but I didn't see them because I was sleeping. And so I woke up and I said, hey, you know, what's going on? Oh, I said, did you send it? No, no, I wanted your approval. Oh, okay, cool. Oh, and I told my friend, you're teaching me a lot about how to love. And my friend wants to, you know, thought, oh, maybe I need that as well. Is that life or is it work? How do I delineate the two? I think for some professions, it's very easy to delineate. this is my work and this is my life. If somebody is working in a factory when you are in the factory you're working when you're at home you're not working. It starts to get a little more gray the boundaries a little more blurry if we start thinking about people who work in consulting or people who work in some of those other fields where you could work in the office but you can work at home as well accounting maybe but even then it's still a little more delineated. Now Now, if you start talking about a doctor, man, doctors get asked questions all the time by friends and family. Hey, I got this thing. Could you check out this thing? Especially a dermatologist, I believe. I got this thing on my skin. Can you look at this? So are they working? Is that not work? Is that volunteer pro bono work, but it's still work? What about psychologists?

What about teachers? What about teachers who, when they're not at the school, are they still teachers? Or do they have a life that's separate from that? What about politicians?

Politicians working even when they're not quote-unquote working? I mean, do politicians have work hours or are they working all the time? What about pastors or what about religious leaders and religious figures in organizations?

As a rabbi, as an imam, as a pastor, as a monk, are they working all the time? Or are they living all the time? How do we separate what is life and work when some of the work is so integrated into one's life? And so that's a question I've often asked myself, as people ask it to me, it's so much of what I think I do for, I would say, work, is the way I'm trying to approach how I live. And so if I'm trying to change the way that I live, I'm.

And my work is trying to change the way that I live. Isn't my living the work as well in how I'm living?

Demonstration of the work by living. So it gets really tricky and I have no idea. For some of these things, I don't understand how the accounting would even work without just kind of making stuff up. This is work, this is life, this is work.

And but just in general I think.

I struggle when people tell me to separate the two because they seem so not just connected but integrated they seem so interdependent and maybe a lot of people don't live their life that way But maybe a lot of people haven't chosen careers or aren't doing work specifically in something so fundamental, something so at the roots of how we interact and live as humans. It's just feeling and talking about how we feel and our attachment and connections to things, but also individuals.

It's just so fundamental.

If I get better at saying yes or saying no, how do I not do that outside of a work context? I mean, the idea is to get better at doing it in life contexts, to get better at doing it at the kitchen table, to get better at doing it in the bedroom, to get better at doing it at the bar, to get better at doing it at work as well, in the conference room or in the office or sales, however the sales may be on the internet or in social media. So for me.

Yeah, it becomes even difficult sometimes to describe it to people, because I think sometimes we want to package it in a way that doesn't feel so organic. Okay, my work is that I go into offices and I speak, I give talks, I'm up on stage and I give talks. But what if I go into an office and I have a casual one-on-one conversation with somebody over lunch? Does that count as work? work what if i'm actually at the bar sitting next to somebody who's having a beer i'm having a beer it's a stranger and then we talk about something deep i don't know if i mentioned on the podcast but um i was at the bar once i talked to this guy military like veteran who was really struggling with stuff and got like a deep conversation and then the guy was quite drunk and he went to the bathroom and uh i was like that guy's been in the bathroom quite long so i went to the bathroom just to see what was going on. And he was sitting in the stall. And I think I even knocked on the door of the stall. I said, hey, man, are you okay? The guy came out, and I think he was just sitting on the toilet, like clothed and everything. The guy came out. He said, man, you came to check on me? And he gave me a huge hug.

Is that life or is that work? Maybe sometimes they're the same. So for me to say you know these are the work activities that i'm doing and it's so separate from my life it just sometimes it feels like i'm making shit up because i don't think in this particular type of work that they're really that separate if me training myself to become more loving and more excited and more enthusiastic and more hopeful and more alive in a way if i do that training, and then I use that energy where I go around and I'm more hopeful and alive, in different groups, formally and informally, isn't the informal stuff still work too? If that's part of the goal is to spread this hope, to spread this.

Vivacity, zeal perhaps. Anyways, now I'm starting to ramble as the night gets a little late, but Yeah.

So I just throw that question to you and maybe think about how life and work aren't always as separate, aren't always as disconnected as we think they are. And that it's okay to sometimes have them blur. Or more than anything, it's okay to sometimes realize that a lot of things are really connected and really similar and really integrated.

And that's frankly what the message I'm trying to send so many people tell me oh no that's so different I'm like no it's not oh they're really disconnected they have no connection but they really do have a connection, and so ironically I think as people feel more connected as people get better at dealing with conflicts and resolving conflicts we start to realize, things are connected things are more similar And then maybe those people look at what I do and go, you know, your life and your work is quite similar. Maybe it's a litmus test. If somebody says life and work are really different, if people keep emphasizing the differences and keep emphasizing the disconnection, then maybe it's a litmus test for how disconnected they might feel in their life at the moment. And a litmus test for how many conflicts they might be experiencing that are maybe making them feel more disconnected or pulling them away from the things that they care about and just driving wedges in their mindset.

Again, looking at it from an emotional combat perspective, not judging them for being in this place, but just trying to understand what are the other conflicts happening in their life that may have led them to a place where they think things in life are just really disconnected and have nothing to do with each other. Very independent, very on their own.

Anyways, that's about 10 minutes.

Shit, it's 12 minutes. Way too long. It did feel long today. So I'm going to stop very quickly. And I will talk to you all on Monday. And I promise it'll be shorter next week. Bye.