The pleasure lies partly in flow, in the process of losing oneself in a puzzle with a solution on which other people depend. The sense of purposeful immersion and exertion is the more appealing given the hands-on nature of the work: top professionals are the master craftsmen of the age, shaping high-quality, bespoke products from beginning to end. We design, fashion, smooth and improve, filing the rough edges and polishing the words, the numbers, the code or whatever is our chosen material. At the end of the day we can sit back and admire our work – the completed article, the sealed deal, the functioning app – in the way that artisans once did, and those earning a middling wage in the sprawling service-sector no longer do.
The fact that our jobs now follow us around is not necessarily a bad thing, either. Workers in cognitively demanding fields, thinking their way through tricky challenges, have always done so at odd hours. Academics in the midst of important research, or admen cooking up a new creative campaign, have always turned over the big questions in their heads while showering in the morning or gardening on a weekend afternoon. If more people find their brains constantly and profitably engaged, so much the better.
Those two paragraphs spoke to me.
I was home with the kids for ~7 years, some of which they were at school full time. Keeping house (cleaning, laundry, cooking) is not fun when you have to do it on a day to day basis (at least for me). I was like the maid.
Working is FUN. I use my brain. I solve puzzles. I fix things. (I am an engineer, by the way). I make a product (sort of.... I tell the operators who do the drudgery of mass production how to make the product) that I am proud of. Yes I think about work at night an occasionally read emails, but I can also leave whenever during the day to go to my kids' school stuff. And at my company most people work ~40 hours a week. This has been true of every job I have had- for myself at least, if not coworkers.
When I worked PT I was working and still doing all the drudgery. Maybe working PT will be more fun when the kids are grown and H and I can each just take care of ourselves. But for now, I mush prefer working FT to being home.