Taking the "Career" out of Work

Tugged by Anita Kunz

One of the things I'm still getting used to in this simpler version of life is not having a career. I made the decision to step off the corporate ladder when we moved away from the city several years ago. And for the most part, I don't regret that decision. I appreciate life more and have gained a kind of balance that just wasn't possible with my former line of work.

However, I still haven't quite gotten the hang of simply working. I have a decent job but still often treat it as I would a career: orienting my tasks towards personal growth and constantly searching for new ways to add value. I even find myself thinking about my work sometimes when I get home.

I know, conceptually, that all this extra work isn’t necessary. All that is expected of me, and all that I get paid for, is to fill the needs of my job description and go home. Doing more than that won’t get me promoted because there isn’t a job above me. Pay raises, if given, aren’t given here for performance. Why waste precious time and energy on doing things that won’t benefit me?

What I really wish I could do is just treat my job the way my grandparents used to treat theirs. They would go to work every day (they both worked for the city—Grandpa in maintenance and Grandma in the accounting department), put in their 8 hours, and go home. That’s it. Their jobs weren’t exciting but they were comfortable with what they did and who they worked with. And they filled their time outside of work with more important things, like family and friends. This view of work is what I want to fully grasp for myself.

Somewhere along the line, our society became so obsessed with having careers and constantly growing in those careers that we’ve forgotten what it was to just work. We’ve lost the ability (or no longer respect the ability?) to get good at something and do it well and consistently for 30 years or more. I’ve found that constantly striving for the new, better, and improved is exhausting and stressful. And if it takes up your life energy outside the workplace, what good is it? That kind of life has definitely lost its appeal for me.

So I will continue my struggle to unlearn the ways of the corporate world and put aside my desire to better myself in the workplace. One step I've taken is to use my free time at work for something that makes me happy: hence, this blog.

What are your thoughts about jobs and careers? What do you wish for yourself and why?

Repair, Repurpose, Reuse

Ripped

Repairing

Repaired

My husband came home from work recently with a ripped seam in his jacket. It's not a great jacket but even so, I am embarrassed to admit that just a few years ago, I would have been temped to toss it out and go buy him a new one. 

Not these days. For one thing, our personal resources are much more scarce then they used to be. The value of the things we already own have increased substantially and so too has our commitment to maintaining them. For another thing, living more simply has opened our eyes to habits that are unnecessarily wasteful. And like my grandparents who grew up in the depression, I'm feeling that these changes are ones that will stick around long after our personal resources increase.

So rather than throwing the jacket out, I did what my Grandma Mary Jean would have done -- I fixed it. With a little thread, a sharp needle, and a well placed thimble, I had that seam repaired (and pretty well, if I may say so) in about 10 minutes. It was satisfying to do and I didn't have to spend time and money driving to the store for another jacket. A win-win situation.

I'm finding myself doing this with more and more things lately. Rather than automatically throwing something out when it becomes damaged or it's original need filled, I try and think of ways to fix it. Or to reuse it.

We now keep juice bottles for making ice blocks (thanks, Jamie!), sour cream and yogurt containers for storing leftovers, and reuse both sides of a spiral-bound notebook before recycling it. I've extended old jeans with patches, cut down retired blankets for pet beds, and have turned expired calendars into living room art. 

It takes a little creativity and yes, sometimes actual time, but I've found that the satisfaction you get in avoiding having to buy something new outweighs any minor inconvenience in repairing or reusing it. 

Do you ever repair or reuse things you own? What sorts of things have you done?

Veggie Pot Pie



Pot pie cooking




Pot pie cooling




Pot pie and steak (husband's)

It's funny but one of my favorite fall dishes is something I associate with my grandma but never remember her making. Her recipe for Turkey Pot Pie actually came from one of her good friends down the street but my sister and I somehow adopted it made it our own. We did so by replacing the turkey with potatoes and mushrooms (yeah, we're vegetarians) and adding sage or thyme to the dough and filling. The result is a hot and hearty, savory selection of vegetables cradled in a pillowy crust and blanketed in cheddar. The combination is hard to resist!

Veggie Pot Pie
Filling
1 large carrot, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1 medium red potato, chopped
1 c. fresh mushrooms, chopped
1 can mushroom soup
1/2 t. sage (or thyme)
Crust
1/4 c. butter, melted
1 c. flour
1/2 t. salt
1 t. baking powder
1 egg
1 c. sour cream
1/2 t. sage (or thyme)
1 c. grated cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 400.

Filling: In a large skillet, sauté all vegetables except mushrooms until tender. Remove from heat. Add soup, mushrooms, and herbs. Mix well.

Crust: Mix egg, butter, and sour cream until smooth. Add remaining ingredients except cheese. Blend well. Spoon crust into pie plate and smooth dough up the sides. Add hot filling. Place in oven for 15 minutes. Top with cheese. Bake another 10-15 minutes until cheese is melted and crust is light brown.

Believe it or not, we used to serve this with garlic-cheddar biscuits. (Mix up a batch of biscuits, add 1/4 c. grated cheddar and bake as usual. Directly out of the oven, brush biscuits with a mixture of 1/4 c. melted butter and 1/4 t. garlic powder. Serve hot. Yum!)

What are your favorite fall dishes? Where did they come from?

Endearments

Those who know me may say that I have a tendency to overdo on endearments. Folks young and old, male and female will often be addressed as "Hons;" favorite females as "Ladies;" favorite males as "Sirs;" and those closest to me are almost always "Sweeties." If I am guilty of overdoing it, I have no one to blame but my Grandma Mary Jean.

Her favorite endearment for her grandchildren was "Love." As in, "Come here once, Love." Or, "How's my Love?" (Sounds a bit British, doesn't it? But she wasn't. I'm not sure where she got the phrase. I haven't met anyone yet who can match it!)

What are your favorite endearments? Who do you like to bestow them on?

Lipstick and Powder

Even in her earlier years, Grandma Mary Jean wasn't a beauty by most people's standards. She was a bit too pear-shaped in body and bit too irregular in feature to earn herself that title. But I never got the impression that bothered her too much. In fact, I sometimes wonder if she was secretly glad she wasn't more classically beautiful. Being who she was left her free to focus on things other than her physical beauty: like her family.

In all her years on this earth, she never wore more on her face than her eyeglasses and, occasionally, some lipstick and powder. That's all. No foundation, no blush, no eyeshadow, no mascara. (And no moisturizer to my knowledge.) Just lipstick and powder.
Did this show a kind of confidence on her part? A lack of caring? A compromise for frugality?

I'll never really know. However, I find something simple and honest in this fact from my Grandmother's life. I've always seen make-up as a kind of burden; a necessary evil that I'm, more often than not, happy to do without. And I wonder if she felt the same.

I sometimes think that truly beautiful people have it harder in life than the rest of us. When you are defined at an early age as "beautiful," you are forced to adopt a lifelong struggle to maintain that beauty against impossible odds. Those of us who are more average in looks have a kind of gift in being free from this burden. And we have the added blessing of knowing that we've earned our place in life--our loves and our triumphs--not because of our appearance, but because of our other (and I'll argue, more important) qualities.

But then again, what is beautiful?

Restless and Reading

Reading on the couch at 2:30am

Every once in a while I, like most people, have trouble sleeping. You know the feeling: you wake up hours too early with too much on your mind and no practical way of getting any of it accomplished until dawn. Watching the clock, you debate with yourself about whether to get up and do something or whether you should just lie there and force yourself to sleep. The latter plan almost never works for me. So I almost always get up and read in the living room.

This was the case about 2:30am a few nights ago. And as I curled myself up on the couch under a blanket with my latest mystery novel propped on my knees, I realized that this must have been a trait I inherited from my Grandma Mary Jean.

As a kid, I'd wake at odd hours to find her on the sofa, stretched out under a blanket, engrossed in the novel propped to reading level on her chest. Her glasses would have slipped down her nose a bit, her hair would be gently ruffled, and she would have kicked off the shoe-like slippers she always wore in the house. I discovered her reading like this often enough to assume that this was a regular habit with her. To this day, I don't know if she had occasional trouble sleeping or if she just couldn't quite put down those really good books. (Know the feeling?)

Like me, Grandma was rarely without a novel--she could buy them from their neighborhood clubhouse for 10 cents, after all--and had stacks of the things in the closet, one in her sewing bag, and others by her bed. Her favorites were romance novels and mysteries. Turns out those are now my favorites as well.

What do you do when you can't sleep at night?

Weekend Hotcakes

This Weekend's Pumpkin Spice Pancakes

One of my favorite memories about spending weekends with my Grandparents was waking up to the delightful smell of hotcakes on the griddle. There was something warm and comforting in being able to stumble, bleary-eyed and sleepy into the kitchen while the sweet, buttery smell of cooking cakes would fill the air. After delivering to each of us our morning hugs and kisses, Grandma Mary Jean would sit us at the kitchen counter with a steaming plate of hot cakes, and containers of butter and homemade syrup. Her hotcakes were always golden brown, slightly crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, and were the perfect complement to that delicious syrup. None of us ever left that counter without eating at least 3 or 4.

I got a hankering for Grandma's hotcakes this weekend and whipped up a batch for breakfast Sunday morning. They weren't, of course, anything like my Grandma's (they lacked the crisp outer coating and homemade syrup) but they certainly hit the spot. Along with a freshly brewed cup of coffee and a whole day stretching out in front of me, it was a pretty great way to start the morning.

How do you like to start your weekend mornings?