(A Personal Essay)

I Play When I Work

Perhaps the difficulty begins with the way we define work and play.

For most of my life as a teacher, I have thought of the classroom as my playground. My students are my playmates, and the subject we explore together is our toy.

It is still work, of course. Responsibilities, deadlines, examinations, gRades, reports, and all the other things that come with being a teacher still exist.

But when I enter the classroom and begin interacting with my students, I don’t feel as though I have entered a place I need to escape to start living again.

I am already living. I am playing while I work.

And the classroom is not my only playground.

My website has become another.

I can spend hours there writing, arranging, revising, designing, organizing, and creating. Someone watching me might say, “You’re working again.”

Perhaps I am.

But it doesn’t feel that way.

A book, too, is a kind of playground to me. Better yet, it is a swimming pool. I open its pages and swim among the words. I immerse myself in someone else’s thoughts, sometimes floating peacefully with them and sometimes struggling against their current.

Then there is writing.

Place a blank sheet of paper before me—or an empty screen—and I see something resembling a blank canvas. There is nothing there yet. Then the artist in me begins putting down colors: a word, a sentence, an idea, an image. Some colors don’t work, so I remove them. Others need blending. Sometimes I paint over an entire paragraph and begin again.

Even the tapping of the keyboard is music to my ears. Each key I press carries a tiny pleasure because something that existed only in my mind a moment ago is slowly becoming visible.

Call it work if you wish.

I call it play.

__________

Who Gets to Define Enjoyment?

This doesn’t mean my way of enjoying life is better than anyone else’s.

Someone may find tremendous pleasure in traveling. Another may enjoy parties and nightlife. Someone else may want nothing more than a weekend at the beach. Others enjoy shopping, drinking with friends, watching movies, playing golf, or spending an afternoon doing absolutely nothing.

Good for them.

The mistake begins when we assume that what restores and delights us must also restore and delight everyone else.

Perhaps part of knowing ourselves is discovering what genuinely gives us joy—and eventually becoming comfortable enough not to require other people’s approval of it.

Reading gives me joy.

Writing gives me joy.

Teaching gives me joy.

Research gives me joy.

Exercise gives me joy.

Creating something for my self-improvement advocacy gives me joy.

Why should I abandon those things during my “free time” merely because someone else classifies them as work?

__________

Where Does Work End and Life Begin?

There are evenings in my apartment in South Korea when I am doing what I call my “light work.” Perhaps I am writing something. Perhaps I am reading. Perhaps I am tinkering with my website.

And somewhere nearby, my phone or computer is connected to my family through a video call.

We talk.

I continue doing what I am doing.

They do what they are doing.

Someone says something; I answer. There may be laughter. Then I return to my keyboard. We may simply remain connected while each of us goes about our own activities.

So where, during those moments, does work end and personal life begin?

I don’t know.

More importantly, I don’t know that I need to know.

Perhaps what I have gradually created is not perfect work-life balance but a kind of work-life synergy—a way of living in which the different parts of my life do not always compete for territory but can sometimes nourish one another.

That does not mean boundaries are unnecessary. Work should not become an excuse for neglecting family, health, sleep, relationships, or the other dimensions that make us whole. Enjoying what we do does not make our bodies immune to exhaustion.

There is still a time to stop.

But perhaps there is also a difference between work that invades our life and meaningful activity that has become part of the life we have chosen to live.

__________

What Do I Get From All The Writing I Do?

That’s the question members of my family and friends usually ask.

They always support what I do, but they understandably appreciate activities that produce something tangible.

Teaching is easy to explain.

I teach. I receive a salary.

That equation makes perfect sense.

And, needless to say, members of my family are very happy with that particular arrangement.

Writing is more complicated.

It would not be accurate to say that writing has never rewarded me financially. It has. There have been times when I was paid to edit articles or commissioned to write articles for publications. My research has also brought financial rewards. I welcome those opportunities—and my practical wife certainly appreciates them.

But there is an important distinction: there is a difference between being paid for something I love doing and doing something because I am paid to do it.

Money can be one of the rewards of writing, but it has never been the reason I enjoy writing. I have experienced both the intrinsic reward of creating and the extrinsic rewards that sometimes follow it. When the latter comes, I am grateful. But even when it does not, the former remains.

So what is the reward when nobody is paying me to write?

The finished page is the reward.

Seeing something completed that did not exist before I began creating it—that is already enough. If people read what I write, thank you.

If they click Like or Love, thank you.

If they leave a thoughtful comment, I appreciate it.

If nobody reacts, however, something important remains unchanged:

I still experienced the joy of creating it.

The reward was never waiting exclusively at the destination. Much of it happened during the journey—the thinking, exploring, struggling, revising, discovering, and finally finding the words that said what I wanted them to say.

The applause, when it comes, is welcome.

But it is not why I entered the playground.

PART 3