Pride in 'Pointless' Work

It’s hard to see the point in it all.

I’m moving rocks from one place to another place fifteen feet away. Apparently, so I’m told, the place in which the current rocks rest are in the way of what will one day - in the near future - be a tar driveway.

So I keep moving the rocks, making sure to never show a sign of mental or physical weakness; we are, after all, guests at this host’s farm and they’re putting us up in exchange for our labour.

Once the rocks were moved – three hours later – I stood proudly over the new pyramid I had created. “I did that,” I thought with a smile. “I did that stupid task and, for a reason unbeknownst to me, I’m damn proud of it.”

My pride was short-lived, however. There was an entire area of land that needed rocks literally picked from the soil and displaced into another giant pile of rocks, which I will no doubt have to move one day soon.

I picked the hell out of those rocks though.

During my picking, I couldn’t help but think of an interview I heard with David Duchovny – the Californication and Ex-Files star that seems to defy the ageing process. Duchovny, as my goldfish-like memory remembers it, was on Letterman or Leno, and told of a time he went on some kind of a meditation retreat in either upstate New York or upstate California. During said retreat, Duchovny was instructed to shovel the fecal matter of livestock from one location to another. It brought literal meaning to the phrase, “this is horseshit.”

The point of shoveling shit, said Duchovny, was to appreciate the process of doing something with no end or goal.

Just do.

Just be.

All that new-age hippy mumbo jumbo I tell myself when I meditate every morning.

I’m not sure why I remembered that particular interview with Duchovny, but I think it had something to do with aimlessly moving rocks. And my writing.

I’m so quick to stop a story or a blog post or a poem or even a task like picking rocks if I don’t immediately see a "why" inspire in front of me.

I often forget to write just for the sake of writing. I am always telling myself that I have to write this to boost my resume and that to make money.

But to hell with all that. It’s more important to write for the love of writing and art.

Even moving rocks from one location to another and making a tiny rock pyramid brought about a pride in me that I often miss in writing because I’m so hung up on an ambiguous end goal.

It’s just started to rain as I finish writing this blog. Rain means the soil will turn to mud and the mud will drain to a low point on the earth. When that happens, more rocks become exposed, meaning the process needs to start all over again until the grass seeds start to turn into actual blades of grass, thus hiding the rocks I keep having to move.

All that means there's more work for me tomorrow.

Happy writing,

AD.

#movingrocks #enjoyingtheprocess #davidduchovnymeditation #doingpointlesstasks