pinkfloydpsw's Blog

I envy those who do what they are…

I work to earn, to spend the tokens I have earned on things I may need or want. I have to train to do this work because it has process and necessity for others in a chain of events that produces a thing or an outcome. It’s all very boring, and none of what I do comes naturally to a person, it is a blend of mathematics, procedure, and psychology, governed and regulated by teams and collaborative bodies that produce the products to be used. I somewhat enjoy what I do, somewhat, but it is not mine the thing I produce, and if someone offered me more tokens to do something else I would stop doing what I currently do and do that something else instead.

My pal Matt, he does what he is. He does it for a living and he does it because he is it. He plays the guitar and piano and he sings professionally. He’d do this anyway, even if nobody paid him for it, because a creative artist, with passion and vision and with a will to express his inner person in lyric, rhythm and melody, is the essence of who he is. Whereas I am an IT guy, that’s what I do for my tokens, I do this for the greater benefit of somebody else, the controller of the tokens. I would not spend a minute doing what I do for these token if I were not getting them in the bargain of selling my abilities to the token giver. Matt would sing and play and write songs even if he worked a completely different job to get his tokens. That makes a big difference to how we know ourselves through our labour, when a person asks “who are you?” I answer with what I do for a living, he answers with something more real.

The sculptor, the painter, the poet, the writer, the musician and the sportsman, these are very lucky people, they do what they would do anyway and maybe somebody might give them tokens enough in exchange for their continued doing that they need do nothing else.

The fact that Matt can monetise his essence brings me great envy, and hope.

I published this and then I immediately edited it because I thought I had missed something. I wanted to add that Matt worked hard to become what he is, as other artist also do, I’d never say that what they are doing is not work, nor that they do not have struggles and make sacrifices. I think the difference is that their hard work is to unlock something that is there in potential in the first place, something that will bust to get out anyway, whereas pouring fancy coffee well or laying bricks is something you learn with purpose to get a job.

Paul S Wilson