Day Job

From Menletter February 2003

By Tim Baehr

It can be very hard, and frustrating, to try to do "men's work" and hold down a day job. I've struggled with this for a couple of years, working full-time as a technical writer and part-time as a teaching assistant in a couple of evening courses in business writing, along with trying to keep up this newsletter and help with the drumming and poetry sessions. In some of my darker moments, I'm convinced that I have to wait till I "retire" so I can get to the real work. I admit that in some ways I'm stuck with the idea -- and the fact -- of being a good provider for my family, and perhaps in some ways I'm addicted to the income from the day job and the joy of teaching in the moonlight jobs.

But I see some guys doing more with men, and I sometimes become a little jealous. How do they find the time? I wonder if anyone else is doing substantial men's work and also keeping up with a day job. I don't have endless energy like some people, and maybe I'm just jealous of their energy and focus. It's frustrating.

Maybe some of you are experiencing the same frustrations.

Sometimes writing is a way of focusing and clarifying. In writing this essay, I'm beginning to see things from another perspective. Here's where I'm going with this:

Peter, my senior professor, lectures students on the need to answer three questions: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? These are very close -- almost identical, actually -- to the Buddhist principle of Right Speech. I've followed this principle in most of my 35-year writing career, but Peter has articulated it in this compact form.

And it occurred to me that I could be more conscious about folding this principle back into any writing or communicating that I do: in my day job, in this newsletter and other men's work, in communicating with colleagues and family.

There are other ways in which my daily work and my "men's" work can communicate to each other across the apparent chasm between them. The organizational techniques in technical writing can make the newsletter clearer. Meditation, poetry, drumming, and simply being with other men of good heart and soul can put me more in touch with values that give significance to my daily work, family interactions, and so on. The deep respect I have for my students, and my commitment to their success, is a training ground for whatever men's work I'll be privileged to do in the future. And so it goes, back and forth.

(It also occurs to me that there's a danger in things going in the wrong direction. I could be doing men's work full-time in a rote, soulless, manipulative way, putting ego gratification and control of others ahead of the heart-work and soul-work.)

So there it is. The apparent conflict between my ordinary work and the "real" work I want to do is perhaps not a conflict at all. It's all heart-and-soul work, or it least it all has that possibility. And as long as I have a traditional day job, I have a duty -- or an opportunity -- to do it in such a way that it is of a piece (or of a peace) with the larger picture, the larger me.

Or to put it another way: With the right perspective, it's all men's work.