Note:  Still trying to master the new Blogger tools...sorry for any formatting sloppiness, but try as I might, I can't seem to figure out how to correct.

Faulkner once observed that “work” is the only thing we can do (other than sleep) for any extended period of time. We can’t eat or drink or have sex for 8 hours straight (not that some people don’t try) but we can work.

The first law of thermodynamics states that when work is done to a system, the system's energy state changes by the same amount of the work input. This equates work and energy. And energy is the ability that a physical system has in order to do work on other physical systems.

I don’t pretend to fully (or even partially) understand the exact science of it, but the idea that work and energy are synonymous appeals to me. It broadens the concept to embrace the idea that whenever we are expending energy, we are working –which includes sitting on our butts worrying, daydreaming, meditating, watching, listening—as well when we’re toiling, playing sports, games, music, tending our gardens etc. However, that’s not to say that all expenditures of energy are productive…but that’s another word and another subject entirely.

Tolstoy said, "One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love…"

and...

Freud is purported to have said that the goal of psychotherapy is to allow the patient to love and to work

The love part is pretty easy for most people to get, even if it’s understood only in a romantic or sexual sense. But the work part of it is a bit more subtle… and interesting, if only because it gets so much less attention than the former.

“If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z, with X being work, Y play, and Z keeping your mouth shut.”
Albert Einstein




















Work like you don’t need the money, love like you’ve never been hurt and dance like nobody’s watching.
--Satchel Paige






“Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need”
Voltaire





The laziest man I ever met put popcorn in his pancakes so they would turn over by themselves.
--W.C Fields







But writing about work is too much like work…
so let’s just look at pictures—of people at work.

Look Carefully