Work work work. I’ve spent my summer working my ass off. I’ve been working as a guide in glamping in a remote village in Greenland. The glamping was supposed to be “high end”, which means that the guests expect alot. Which also means as a guide you are on from the second you wake up till you go sleep. Usually the groups stay for 3 days. It’s manageable work if you have some days off inbetween the groups. Then you can gather your social energy so you can give the next group a full out experience.

There was lots of issues with the company I was working for. One of them was that they had us guides working back to back groups. That meant picking up your next group at the same time you dropped up your current group. Usually your next group would be arriving with the same flight that your current group was departing with. So to make everything look proffesional, I would leave my group inside the airport and then go and wait for my next guests outside the airport, to give the impression to the guests that i wasnt working back to back, which I was. The longest period with work like this lasted about 3 weeks.

I had a mini burnout, like you could guess.

What kept me going most of the time was looking forward for it to be over, and thinking about how great it WILL be.

The whole “experience” got me thinking alot about working and peoples relationship to work. Either you see work as a means to an end, or you see it as the end itself. The practical version of this might be; working hard to feel good later and doing something thats fullfilling to you now.

Working is also a wonderful escape for people who dont feel comfortable with themself and their position in the world. Just like any other drug. Throwing yourself into your work gives you a very clear and immediate sense of purpose. Put simply, it gives you something to do. But why do you need something to do? I guess its different for everybody but for most people need something to do to block out the underlying emptiness of life.

Thats something i noticed working in this crazy place for the summer. My colleagues complain about how much they are working and they wish it to be otherwise. But they are older than me and have worked this way all their life. When they stop working like this they’ll find theres a big hole that needs to be filled.

The idea that you can fill your whole life with work work work, and then one day just stop and feel fine, must be one of the the most widespred lies we tell ourself.

So thats why I feel its important to give space in your life for that emptiness, that time of doing nothing. Among other things to prepare yourself for that day when theres nothing left to do. So that you then can find all the beauty around you, because its always there, you just need to train yourself to see it. If you spend your whole life searching for meaning and happiness somewhere else, when you finally arrive, you wont magically find the meaning in the present, most likely you will start doing what you have always done, start searching somewhere else.

With that said! I don’t want to spend my life working my ass off just so things will be better in the future. Rather I want to appreciate every single moment, even the ones filled with pain and frustration! Im grateful that ive had this experience because it has taught me so many wonderful things and the beauty has been immense!

But if i can chose, im not working like that again 🙂