What Is Work?

If you want no better example of the difficulty in truly defining what it is a writer does that is "work," look at the WGA strike. All writers on the staffs of sitcoms and shows are required to turn in to the WGA their current scripts-in-progress so that when the strike is over, there cannot "miraculously" two days later be completed scripts. I.e., they are supposed to be STRIKING, not working, and they should not be developing the intellectual property for the shows they are striking against. But, truly, are their brains at rest? If the script writers develop novels, that's fine. But should they not even THINK, for example, about what's happening to the poor Pie-Maker in Pushing Daisies? (My fave show.) Not advance the storyline in their minds?

I struggle, daily, with the perception in my household that I don't really work. Despite the fact that I have, most years, single-handedly supported six people as a writer, if the children are sick, I'm expected to drop everything and stop working to tend them because don't writers, after all, have unlimited sick days? We don't have bosses. Don't answer to a supervisor. We don't punch a clock. We don't make an hourly or weekly paycheck. So we can take off . . . whenever. Right? Lose a week of work to sick kids and sick self . . . I can make it up, right? After all, I can work ANY TIME since my desk is right there in my home office. The implication is I can work ALL the time, and yet . . . it's trivialized because it's not work done in a business suit but work done in pjs. I take the time off. Not the guy I live with. And just so you don't think he's the only jerk . . . my entire extended family--cousins, sisters, parents, aunts . . . anyone with an opinion . . . doesn't think there's a THING wrong with that. Because I work from home. Why would he call in sick when I'm THERE?

If I am researching Faberge eggs, as I am for my new book, it does, indeed, look like I am doing something totally cool. And yes, it's BEYOND awesome that, in essence, I get PAID to think up an idea, do the research, and READ about things that actually INTEREST me. So yes, in some respects, it doesn't feel like work. The old idea that if you follow your passion, you will love getting up to go to work every day for the rest of your life is true. Most of the time I don't wake up on Monday and groan, "Another day at the office." But, despite the fact that I get to read about Faberge eggs . . . in fact, I am WORKING.

Do I sound pissed off? Especially for a peace-loving Buddhist gal like myself? Yeah. I'm pissed. I'm tired of the misperceptions about my career. Not just about MY career, honestly, but about all my friends' careers. My unpubbed friends get it worst of all because hell, isn't it just a HOBBY until you get paid? And I realize that when you use your brain, when it's an amorphous kind of thing . . . it is hard to define the parameters of what's work. I know, for example, that this blog, while not work by any stretch, is my warm-up for the day. I flip out a few hundred words, and I settle myself. So it's usually wake up, pray, wake kids, get showers rolling, blog while chaos reigns, and then . . . then they're all gone--all except the now-infamous Demon Baby, I have somehow settled my brain into what it has to do for the day.

So no, it doesn't LOOK like work. But I am working.

Thoughts?