Work I Thought I Was Past

The work is available. That is not the problem.

The problem is that it is the kind of work you did at nineteen, and there was a whole arc in between, and taking it now feels like the arc did not happen.

And there is a specific person you are dreading. Not everybody. One person, whose face you can already see, who will ask what you are doing at the moment and to whom you will have to say it out loud.

That is what is actually stopping you. Not the hours, not the work itself, not the early start. One face.

I want to deal with that, and I want to do it without once suggesting that this is a temporary thing on the way to something better, because that framing is what makes honest work feel like a punishment.

The instruction does not sort the work

There is a line in Colossians that is written to slaves in a household, which is to say to the people doing the least regarded work in that society, and it does something remarkable with it.

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. (Colossians 3:23, King James Version)

Whatsoever ye do.

There is no sorting in that sentence. It does not distinguish between skilled and unskilled, or between a calling and a job, or between work that suits your background and work that does not. Whatsoever.

And then the audience it is redirected to: as to the Lord, and not unto men. Which means the evaluation moves. The people whose opinion you are dreading are named specifically and set aside in the same breath.

Colossians 3:23 addresses people whose work carried no status at all and gives them an audience of one, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that reach somebody who is dreading a face.

You are working to an audience that has never once sorted work by its status. Colossians 3:23 says whatsoever ye do, as to the Lord, and not unto men, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves the evaluation off a person whose opinion has been governing this decision.

Not a stepping stone

Here is the thing I most want to refuse on your behalf, and it is the thing everybody says kindly.

They will tell you it is just for now. That it is a stepping stone. That it will not be forever.

And every one of those sentences, however warmly meant, agrees with the premise that the work is beneath you and only bearable because it is temporary. That premise is what will make the next six months miserable, because it means every day at that job is a day of not yet being back where you belong.

I am not going to say it. I do not know whether it is temporary and neither do you, and more to the point, the dignity of the work does not depend on the answer.

Colossians 3:23 attaches heartily to whatsoever, with no clause about duration anywhere in it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can make a present job a real thing rather than a waiting room.

You are doing real work now, and its worth has never once depended on what it leads to. The written word says whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, with no reference to how long, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a job out of a waiting room and puts it into a life.

Tell one person plainly

So here is the assignment, and it is the face.

Take the shift, and then tell one person plainly what you are doing and why. Not the person you are dreading, necessarily. One person, said flatly, in a normal voice, without the small self-deprecating joke you were going to attach. The joke is the thing to leave out. It is the tell. It is how a person announces they are ashamed before anybody else has had a chance to form an opinion, and it invites exactly the reaction you were trying to avoid.

Say what you are doing and why, and stop. And you will find, most of the time, that people say something like fair enough and move on, because almost nobody is thinking about your employment as much as you are.

Colossians 3:23 hands the assessment to God rather than to a room, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in the ninety seconds after somebody says something plainly.

You are able to say it without the joke, and the joke has never once protected anybody. Colossians 3:23 sets the opinion of men aside explicitly, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a voice in an ordinary conversation about work.