Coping 13: Carving out spaces for joy
Coping is short posts on Fridays about coping methods for doing creative and focused things in an unfocused world. In Coping 13, carving out room for joy in one's work.
In any given year, I manage to oscillate between remembering that I enjoy what I do for a living, and becoming a very dutiful and rules-/metrics-bound employee. It's an irritating pendulum to swing on, because it means that one month, I can take genuine pleasure in my work, and another month, I can feel draggy, exhausted, and as if I'm doing things because I have to, not because I want to. I know which end of the swing I'd rather be spending my time on.
While this isn't an unusual story (and indeed, I'm lucky to do work that I often feel really invested in), I find myself looking for ways to spend more time on the enjoyment end of the pendulum's swing. This is where deliberately finding and carving out joyful projects, interactions, or moments comes in. Within the bounds of what I need to do, whether that need comes from organizational strategy or defined duties, can I recognize spaces where the things I love to do will fit? This can be within the mandatory activities, or around the edges. Maybe doing something comparatively boring is a lot nicer if I do it with a fun colleague. Or maybe there's a deliverable with room for some entertaining discretion.
The photo illustrating this post falls into the latter category. A loosely-defined deliverable in a project becomes an opportunity to do critical, challenging, and also deliberately silly work on, in this case, computer vision systems. It meets the brief, but gets there through a process which is based on enjoyment and fun. A side effect is that the project will also be better in the end, but the process of doing it in a way that makes space for joy is the real win.
