I hate work. But I wouldn't trade it in for the world.
I hate work. But I wouldn't trade it in for the world.
Reflections on work as freedom, self-discovery and self-care.
I don’t enjoy “work”.
I am allergic to bosses. I have no patience for rules. I find it laughable that workplaces for adult humans might regulate the length of lunch hour or the number of permissible coffee breaks, and I dislike doing things on someone else’s time, for someone else’s margins or a vision that isn’t mine.
“What is your ambition after this?” a professor asked me once.
“Nothing really,” came my response, almost before I knew it.
“Why did you do the PhD then,” he probed. “Just self-indulgence,” I said, whipping out a cheeky grin.
“Well, what’s the one thing you want to do after your PhD?” he persisted, his gaze penetrating my skull.
“Umm… live an embodied life,” I declared, a far cry from the post-doctoral fellowship or tenure-track job he was hoping to hear in my words. All I want to do is make time for birds, travel, long walks, slow-coffee, runs, hikes, writing, swimming, looking at art, reading, research, singing, driving, yoga, you name it. This means I am the laziest lawyer I know but I’ll live, because I get to be living.
Yet I love that I can work.
So I occasionally do things on others’ time, for others’ margins, and to fulfil others’ visions. Often, I work so hard that it would be more accurate to say that my job works me.
I am aware that this is a spectacular contradiction. But it also isn’t.
You see, nobody expects me to work, like nobody expects a car to fly.
One time, I drove over to see family in my new car. An aunt promptly asked me when my husband bought the car. When my hot-shot mediator ex-boss goes out to dinner, she continues to be introduced as the wife of her lawyer husband. When my father married my mother, he let her know that he would be the bread-winner. And if I gave up all my work now to be a stay-home mum, nobody would bat an eyelid. But all the men who chose to be stay-home dads in my family haven’t stopped hearing how much of a liability they’re being to their wives who are working so hard for them.
Apparently, work is like a hobby I might take up in between fulfilling the real purpose of my life - some combination of babymaking and caregiving. The serious business of working to earn an income (or a family car) is strictly reserved for the poor man who is allowed no other choice.
Yet, work is worshipped so much that it would be nice if I worked, like it would be nice if my car came with a coffee-cup holder.
Sometimes, I get a phone call asking what I’m up to. If I happen to say I’m reading, or god forbid, chilling, it turns out the person on the other end hears that I am free and available to do some obligatory but inane thing for the family. If I happen to say I’m off to finish up a paper I’m working on, my caller will apologise for disturbing me and let me go on with my day. Work is so valuable and important that it can override other kinds of social scripts that define what I should be doing with my time.
For many caste-privileged women like me, no one expects us to do the things men do. But everyone believes it would be nice if we worked and did the things men do in addition to all the things are are required to do.*
For the caste-privileged man though, no one expects that he do anything other than be chained to his desk to earn till he dies (or retires). But everyone believes it would be nice if the man makes time for his home, his kids, his hobbies or just living.
So back to the point. I don’t enjoy work but I love that I get to work.
In a world where I’m required to (only) be a dedicated parent, wife, driver, chef, house-and-household-manager and finance-executive, work is whatever I want it to be. Work can be the way I join my husband in bringing alive our dreams as a family, and work can be the way I get away from the expectation of babymaking and caregiving. Work is my doorway to new social situations, my license to travel, and my gateway to new, unfamiliar worlds.
Even at its worst, getting to work is freedom. At its best, getting to work is self-discovery and self-care.
Work showed me that thinking deeply is an embodied activity, not a cerebral chore. Work taught me to write from my body, and to identify my heart-voice alongside my head-voice. Work helped me find my power, and discover my voice in rooms run by men. Work is a wide open space to live my subjective experience, where I learn more about myself than I could possibly have understood in the social scripts that I was born to. Work has taught me that I can always be more than I ever have been.
Would I rather be learning that I’m basically a unicorn with rainbow-wings by doing fun things other than work? This is a counterfactual I cannot answer, because I only got here - to this point, writing this essay, reflecting on my role in my social scripts for work and women - through my journey in work.
So I don’t take it lightly that I have the option to work. It remains the wildest dream of thousands of women in my country, and is not a mere option for most men in my life.
Not because “I work” is the only right answer to shut down most intrusive questions I get asked about my life choices. But because “I work” is the identity that I can disappear into, to access a rare gift.
The power to be a truer version of myself, outside of the confines of the social scripts and the limits of the social imagination I was born into: a lover of birds, travel, long walks, slow-coffee, runs, hikes, writing, swimming, looking at art, reading, research, singing, driving, yoga, you name it.
*This is the Indian equivalent of a first-world problem. Only women like me - born into caste-privilege - will complain about this. For thousands of working-class women, work is a compulsion because there would be no other way to keep body and soul together in their homes.
Feedback is the greatest love language. This piece got a whole lot of love. Thanks to and , all of whom write on Substack and must be read as well.
I enjoyed this read so much. I hope one day you'll read the book Garden City. In fact I'll send it to you. It's about exactly this. We were not made to have our work be our identity or our meaning. But once we off load those burdens from work, work in fact can be a beautiful thing.
And I look forward to continuing to read the beautiful things you post here!
Damn, what a power piece 👏🏽 So much of what you say speaks to me. I especially loved these nuggets:
"Work can be the way I join my husband in bringing alive our dreams as a family, and work can be the way I get away from the expectation of babymaking and caregiving. Work is my doorway to new social situations, my license to travel, and my gateway to new, unfamiliar worlds."
"Even at its worst, getting to work is freedom. At its best, getting to work is self-discovery and self-care."
Work is a means to define myself beyond the identity-roles of wife, mother, caregiver. Yet, I don't define my identity through work.