I am considering a change. I hear a lot of women who send the first one off to college and have one more in high school look around and think: What\u2019s next?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The truth is I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t even know what I want to be next. But it has got me thinking about work and Work and how there are different types of work. Maybe I think of types of work differently than other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thought Work is what I have done during my career \u2013 but does it have to be thought work to be a career? Some people would say so. I don\u2019t agree. As I consider what path I want to take next, I am struck by the fact that both things I am considering are Thought Work. Do I want to be an author? Do I want to try and be a coder? A software creator who develops the code other people need. As I was weighing the options and the path to get from here to there, it struck me that I want to do things that separate me from other people. I want to let my thoughts develop and bring me money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To me, both jobs could be careers. To me, both jobs involve creating within a structure for gain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deed work is all those people who are working jobs that can\u2019t be done remotely1<\/a><\/sup>I mean, there are other examples of deed work. This is just how I see it.<\/span>. As I, and others like me, struggle with employer demands we return to the office, it is easy to forget how many people didn\u2019t get to take a break from the office. They didn\u2019t get the privilege of having to balance a kid on a computer trying to go to school with completing their own work. You can\u2019t harvest vegetables remotely2<\/a><\/sup>Yet<\/span>. If some people hadn\u2019t been out there keeping on with their jobs, we would be in a much worse place now as we move into accepting a new disease as part of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LittleOne expresses interest in deed work from time to time. He asks me if being a construction worker is a good idea. I try to change the message I got as a child when I pass it along to my children. College is one path. There are other paths. The goal, in my mind, is to never stop learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I look back on my work life in order to choose a new direction, I remembered something interesting. At one point, I was so disenchanted with my management and so disappointed with the results of my systems engineering, I started dreaming of going back to being a dishwasher in a chain pizza place3<\/a><\/sup>The first job I had that gave me a W-2 at the end of the year.<\/span>. Seriously. I dreamed this awake and I dreamed this asleep. I thought to myself \u2013 at least I would feel clean at the end of a day of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I didn\u2019t open a restaurant. I didn\u2019t get a job in a restaurant. I changed my situation by changing who I worked for and what I worked on. I stayed with thought work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes, I dream about opening a bookstore or tea shop4<\/a><\/sup>I am a dreamer.<\/span>. I like to bake, and I keep thinking my cookies and pies would sell5<\/a><\/sup>They wouldn\u2019t. The truth is, my deed work needs some\u2026 work.<\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No work is done in a closed system unless there is both thought and deed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n My second least favorite boss ever used to come into my office6<\/a><\/sup>At least I finally got an office with that position.<\/span> and tell me I think too much. It infuriated me. Was it misogynistic? Was he crazy? I never really took him seriously enough to consider what he meant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n