The Problems, You Will Always Have with You

Have I gone on already about how we should count our problems rather than our blessings? From this year’s Best Book Ever, 4000 Weeks, comes the idea of how we often get upset not only at our problems themselves, but somehow, at the mere fact that we have problems at all. We shouldn’t be having problems! Life should be problem-free! If you have a problem, what’s your problem?

The problems, though, you will always have with you.

Suppose, then, every day you listed your top 3 problems. Day after day, you’d see, there’d be no trouble coming up with 3 problems. You’ll always have 3 problems to list. It’s just a matter of what they are.

This way maybe you’ll stop getting upset about having problems.

Evangelist of Work-Life Balance

I would love to make this, but as I oohed and aahed over it, I was summarily told that it would require “more than four harnesses” and would not be a good choice for someone at my level.

Anyway, today someone from TechLab wrote me a belated farewell, and mentioned she was “envious” of my “lifestyle.” Maybe DC people are different from NY people, or the NY people just all know me or know of me; but the TechLab people seem to be slightly dumbfounded at my life. That I raise goats and take time away from work to go to weaving school and whatnot. It seems not to have occurred to them that one could do these things.

If I perhaps inspired one person for one moment to “step away from the computer” and saw some wood or something (manager said he had always wanted to try woodworking school)… then that was a 10-month-year well spent, I would say, even apart from the fact that it was a total blast.

Workers of the world, relax!