Today’s Croan (crappy koan, or words to live by, miserably) is courtesy of my mother. “Who said work should make you happy?”,  was often followed by  “That’s why they call it work and not play! Now get to work.” Equally charming and motivating.

This popped into my mind as I sat at work today endlessly reformatting a report and pasting email addresses into an excel file. The boredom of these tasks makes me want to look at job listings even though I know that fantasizing about more interesting work is really “job porn” when you already have a job. Then I feel guilty. Which brings me back to my mother.

I am ungrateful. I have a job. “Some people don’t have any legs” (a Croan for another post).

The emotional whiplash from ‘This job is a boring right now’ to ‘You are an ungrateful whiner’ is automatic and as violent as a car crash. My mother has been dead for 10 years and her voice in my head is still crackin’ that whip. Makes me wonder how I have seeped into my kid’s head.

So I paste emails (and I write my blog), and I try to figure out how to be grateful for what I have, while still wanting something else.