I make some broad statements about work. These are my opinions generally, but most of my opinions are based in recorded — and therefore verifiable — fact and direct experience. To say how I arrived at these statements would take up a library of books and perhaps a good deal of “walking in my shoes”. But there are some generalities that I can address in an essay. I have not because I think most of my readers thus far have reached similar conclusions in their experienced lives, so I feel like we’re all on the same page. But now it may be that I am beginning to reach a larger swath of people, many of whom have not shared in these experiences, most of whom have not even had the time to do so in their young lives. I suspect some have formed the opinion that I’m just a crazy old bat with yet another blog of dubious advice. So I’d like to address that. I’d like to talk about the waste of work today. Today seems a good time to do so, given the enormous waste work is unleashing on the world in the form of holiday shopping.
I’m going to start with that. I used to own a kids’ bookstore. Like most small retail business owners, I did an outsized part of my sales in the last weeks of the year. I did little to accommodate or encourage that. It was just how the industry works. There are more books released in the autumn than at any other time of the year, and this is especially true for the children’s and young adult markets. I never counted, but catalog listings for books released in the fourth quarter were easily as numerous as all the rest of the year combined…
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