I'm not a workaholic, you are.
Work to deserve rest and rest such that your work may bear fruit.
Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”
He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”
Is writing healing? Or is it selfish?
Does writing heal the self or heal others?
Is writing in and of itself, good?
Is writing, creating, or trying to make art work?
Honestly, for me. It’s all of the above.
Sometimes it’s healing, sometimes it’s selfish. Sometimes it heals me, sometimes others tell me it heals them. It is always in and of itself good for me to write, but the work of art that comes out is not always, in and of itself, good. At least I might not think so.
Sometimes writing, creating, or trying to make art feels like work. Sometimes it is work.
But lately, as I’ve made it more a practice of prayer, the ability to speak to the one who created life itself and me who lives in it, is not work, it’s worship.
I’m going to say something extremely blunt, callous, and hard-hearted, yet true, and it comes from a place of deep hurt, deep pain, deep sensitivity, but also deep respect and compassion for those who I’m calling out.
Everyone that’s ever called me a workaholic, quit.
When people hear how much time I spend writing, developing, and trying to further my craft, they ask me, “Have you been getting enough rest?”
I tell them, “Of course, I got plenty of sleep last night, in fact I don’t set alarms anymore, so I always get enough sleep and I sleep whenever I can’t go anymore.”
I ask them, “How’s your sleep?”
Generally for them, it’s no good.
Work to deserve rest and rest such that your work may bear fruit.
They call me a workaholic because to them what I do sounds difficult and to me it’s the easiest thing I’ll ever do. Is it because it isn’t painful? No, it is deeply painful, but it’s the right type of pain, because it’s the pain of birth, the pain of seeing something beautiful come out of you at the expense of your own unwillingness to subject it to the pain of the world. It is deeply painful, yet deeply meaningful.
In the orthodox tradition it is generally agreed that one takes a day of Sabbath, shutting down all technology, but on the rest of the days, they work, work, and work some more.
Because God created:
light, the sky, the earth, the seas, the plants, the trees, the sun, the moon, the stars, birds, fish, and other water and sky animals, land animals, humans, and women
in one week
and then God rested.
Now, that’s a whole lot. In fact that’s at least, like 6 Substack articles or 6 YT videos or at least two books or more like, the entirety of everything ever that we are and enjoy.
How often do we say, “I’m taking a Sabbath”, only to watch Netflix and do nothing, instead of reveling in the God who created us and everything he has for us to enjoy?
Sometimes writing is work, sometimes it’s worship, but most of all, it’s the best way I know how to express my gratitude for the God who created me.
So today I rest. And today I also write. Because it is rest. And it’s not work.
It is healing and it is prayer and it is worship and I am not a workaholic. You are, if you think speaking to the God who made you is work.
Worship is not a disorder. Worship is not an addiction. Worship is what we were made to do.
So today, on my Sabbath I write and heal and do good, for it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath and it is good to write and heal myself and maybe one day others too.
Sincerely Yours,
The Paraprosdokianist
