Work makes you happy

Work makes you happy; I read it in a magazine so it must be true!
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My appointment was for one o’clock. As I walked over to Marcia’s for a haircut I knew I would be a few minutes early. But I also knew if I stayed home I would dig into another phase of my current project, forget the time, and be late. It suited me to while away a few moments in somebody else’s space. I let myself in Marcia’s shop door and wandered to the window to admire the new patio her husband had recently built. I sat down and picked up the top magazine from the stack on her table. I had idly flicked through several pages when this title, “Work Makes You Happy”, or something to that effect, caught my eye.

Though I snorted with derision, a quick scan of key phrases plunged me into agreement with the article’s main premise. Marcia walked through the door so I put the magazine down. But the idea of work equating with happiness had become glued to my brain.

My Dad would have loved this. Dad was a worker. If you grew up in my family, you worked. My Dad once told me that work was the only thing that gave him satisfaction. He did not know how to relax, how to find enjoyment in idle pleasures. He worked and he gardened, which is work in disguise, and I think he found equal enjoyment in both. He taught me to do whatever I did with all my heart; to do my best. I thank him for that.

I certainly never knew a moment of boredom. Nor, once they were older, were my children ever bored. One look at the gleam in my eye and they quickly found multitudes of fascinating things to do.

I grew up with too much work. Today many of us don’t have enough work. With such a plethora of labor saving devices, with whatever one desires (for a price) at one’s fingertips, with jobs structured into meaningless fragments, one might find oneself longing for the days one left the cabin in the quiet rays of dawn and returned at dusk dragging a moose, walked through the door to the pot of stew bubbling on the hearth and sour dough biscuits steaming in the dutch oven and the candle flickering on the table. I have lived too close to that and it is romantic hogwash.

My premise is that if one is going to open the door to happiness, balance is the key. I learned work from a master. Other pleasures I had to learn on my own. It took many a year for me to realize rest and relaxation are just as important as work. But they don’t negate it nor should they replace it.

The past several weeks have been filled with more work than usual. While I long for a short trip to Lincoln or Kalispell or north to Saskatchewan to visit friends, right now I must content myself with mini-vacations during each work day. So I take time out to make a batch of dill pickles. Or bake bread. Or read another few pages in my much-neglected book. These things give me great satisfaction. A knock on my door is not an unwanted interruption but an opportunity to visit with a neighbor. A trip to the post office, four blocks from home, often consumes an hour. Filling my short list at the grocery store can take even longer, with folks to chat up in every aisle.

As I work I am entertaining the thought of a real vacation at one of my favorite get-away spots, Quinn’s Hot Springs north of St. Regis. It will be a multi-purpose vacation, melding work with play. The work agenda will include planning a job with my son and his wife; play will be splashing with my granddaughter Lexi, plus hours of soaking in hot water. I envision Lexi squealing with joy as I point out the lofty mountain goats clinging to precarious perches. When she splashes water on me, I’ll pretend to be properly annoyed. Then we will giggle together.

Meanwhile, I am content with a vacation on my back steps, sitting in the sun, with cats curling their tails around my legs, blissfully aware of leaves jiggling in the slight breeze, admiring my apples hanging on the trees, redder and juicier and sweeter each day, wondering if I should harvest the potatoes today, watching the bees gathering the last sweetness from my patch of mint and the gold finches cavorting among the remnants of sunflowers. Just a few minutes more, and then back to work.

Sondra Ashton
HDN: Looking out my back door
September 22, 2011
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Eudaemonia and me

Eudaemonia to you too!
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Eudaemonia and me


Eudaemonia: the state of happily following our daemons. A friend sent me this word, knowing it would intrigue me. I like words. I like this word. I like the way it sounds. I like the way it feels on my tongue. For several months I have had this word thumb-tacked above my computer. I studied it from time to time. I mused about my own state of eudaemonia. I wondered just what specific daemons I was following.

With our spate of beautiful weather, such a long time in arriving, I finally identified one of my daemons. No matter how diligently and with what determination I begin a task in my house, I frequently find myself standing in my yard, not knowing how I got there, watering hose in hand, or uprooting yet another insidious patch of toadflax, or just aimlessly wandering, admiring my petunias, lilies, and hollyhocks, glorious in purples, pinks, reds, yellows, salmons and whites. I stand bemused. I started in the bedroom by stripping my bed and ended in the garden watering flowers. I examine my fingernails embedded with gumbo. I reflect on my still unmade bed. I smile. I’ve been following my garden daemon.

On a day when guilt wins out over pleasure, I shake my head at the lilac that is begging me to move her from the front to the back yard, stand my shovel against the door and go back into the house, a return to duty. On another day I will obey my daemon, flee my shop, move the lilac, weed the strawberry patch, harvest mint and lounge in the shade of the Canadian poplar reading a novel.

This morning I found myself wandering outdoors, with a dust rag in my hand. I chortled to myself, “Umm, humm. Eudaemonia strikes again.”

Curiosity led me to my Oxford English Dictionary to look up a formal definition of eudaemonia. There I affirmed that, indeed, I had contracted a chronic case, no doubt fatal, of “happiness or well-being consisting in the full realization of human potential, in rational activity exhibiting excellence”. This is a definition of me in my garden. In fact, I am an artist, “pursuing life with happiness as the ultimate goal”. Guilt, be thou gone.

Through further research I learned that eudaemonia is the basis of an entire philosophy constructed on the theory that the highest ethical goal is happiness and personal well being. Having a happy spirit (daemon is defined as spirit) is the result of “right living”. I like this.

So it turns out that my personal daemon spirits me outdoors, overriding my industrious intentions. Eventually, beds do get made. Bookshelves get dusted. Projects in my shop get finished. And I do these things with a happy spirit, having first indulged in “right living”.

Last night, like the good shoemaker who cut the leather for a pair of shoes in the evening and went to bed, I rolled out material for two couches. I cut fabrics for six cushions, six inside backs, four inside and outside arms, strips for cording, and the boxing and zippers for the cushions. I often make my preparations at night, hoping the elves will have my project finished by morning. When I jumped out of bed, I made coffee and peeked into my shop. No, the elves had not come and finished the couches. My fabric piles lay exactly as I had left them.

But I drank my coffee and bounded out to the yard, watered flowers, dead-headed petunias, pulled a few weeds, harvested chives to chop and dry, picked a gallon of currants for jelly and a bowl of raspberries to eat with cream. I assured the rhubarb, which wanted to be picked today, that I would get to it soon.

The day is young. Already I have stitched the zipper strips, sewed up miles of welt cord, and assembled the cushions. I could do another hour of work in the shop, but I hear my daemon call me. The sun is warm and inviting. We’re already on the short end of July. Basil is ripe to be snipped. Fledgling robins flit from limb to limb. I will gather a bouquet of baby’s breath. There will be plenty of time for long work days in my shop when winter returns.

Sondra Ashton
HDN: Looking out my back door
July 22, 2010
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Making Hay

There is no finer perfume than fresh-cut hay. When I reached the age of seven years, my dad introduced me to working the hay field. “Come out to the field with me and help me drive the tractor.” I thought he meant for me to sit in his lap, his arms around me, his hands on the wheel, me nestled safely against his warm body, smelling his salty sweat and the sack of cigarette tobacco tucked into the left pocket of his chambray shirt, the tag hanging out.

We walked out to the field where the flatbed trailer sat hitched to our scarred Farmall tractor. Dad hefted me up onto the wide metal seat and placed my hands on the wheel. My eyes must have been ready to pop off my face. My heart began to pound in my ears. He shoved the lever into the lowest gear and told me to just hang on to the steering wheel and keep the tractor pointed between the rows of bales. Although I was tall for my age, my feet didn’t reach the pedals. As we rode one length of the field, he gave me pointers on steering. When we reached the end of the row Dad grabbed the wheel and turned the corner for me. Then he jumped off the back of the tractor. I was on my own. I nearly peed my pants. As we chugged down the next row, Dad walked alongside and lifted bales onto the trailer. Now and then he climbed onto the bed and neatly stacked the bales. When I reached the end of every row I’d hold my breath, terrified that I’d run us into the ditch and through the fence. Dad always leaped onto the hitching bar in time to turn the wheel and point me on my way, back and forth across the field.

In time, once I could reach all the pedals, Dad promoted me to drive our old IH farm truck, with a contraption for lifting bales hooked to the side of the truck bed. But first I walked the entire field straightening the bales into long lines. Then I walked back to the truck, picked up my Dad from the shop where he was repairing the baler, and drove along the rows, scooping the bales onto the elevator. I liked to watch through the rear-view mirror as each bale pitched off the top of the incline onto the truck bed. Dad sank his bale hooks into the hay and stacked a neat pattern which tied the load so it wouldn’t shift.

When I had finished my first year of high school, Dad hired my cousin Jim and his buddy Larry to harvest the hay. Jim and Larry were two years older than me and about twenty years smarter. They told me that if I would drag the bales in line and be their water-girl, they would pay me a generous ten percent of their earnings.

Whoopee! I would actually get paid for work I had been doing for years as a family chore. In my mind I spent that money over and over. New boots, school clothes, ice cream sundaes, the movies. Every day I dreamed up a new list. Early each morning I doused myself with 6-12 mosquito dope, pulled on my leather gloves and hurried out to the field. I always had the first rows of bales in line before the boys arrived with the truck.

Once the truck bed was loaded high with hay, I rode in the cab with Jim and Larry back to the stack. I liked this because I got to listen to their dirty jokes. I felt like one of the boys. I laughed, even when I didn’t understand. Jim always knew when I didn’t “get it” and called me on it. When we arrived at the stack, I scurried to the house for jars of iced tea and platters of cookies. Then I’d sit on the truck, swing my legs, and wait for the boys to finish unloading the hay.

When we were just a couple days into the first cutting, the boys suggested that the job would go faster if I could pull the bales over to the edge of the truck so both of them could throw bales onto the stack. That made sense to me. I quickly agreed. So now I not only lined out bales in the field, performed the chores of water-girl, but I dragged the hundred pound bales across the truck bed so the boys could easily snag them with their hooks. Three days into our new routine, a summer shower ended work for the day. I stood in the rain and watched the boys drive off toward town. Something about our arrangement had been bothering me. I mulled it over while I walked out to the river-bend field where Dad was irrigating sugar beets.

I told Dad, “It isn’t fair. I’m working really hard. I work just as many hours as the boys do and I’m only making ten percent. I’m not asking for the same wages. I know I can’t throw the bales up onto the big stack like they can. They have more muscles than I do. But for all I’m doing for them, I think they should pay me twice as much.”

My Dad leaned on his irrigating shovel, studied the ground and gave my tale of woe his full attention. Then he looked me in the eye and said, “You agreed to the deal.” He turned back to his work.

I finished out the haying season, first, second and third cuttings. I did my job. I pocketed my ten percent. I never forgot.

Sondra Ashton
Havre Daily News: Home Again
September 17, 2009