I have been here for years, but you wouldn’t know it, and the longer I lurked the harder it was for me to settle on a screen name. I puzzled, and meditated, and joined twice, once with a name I rejected three hours later, but I never posted so much as a comment. Then I thought a favorite poem of mine, Marge Piercy’s “To Be of Use.”
Towards the end of the poem Piercy writes,
“The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.”
Then she lists such items, things that are made to be used, but now in museums, such as a Hopi vase or a Greek amphora.
. . .
Here is a link to the poem:
http://www.northnode.org/...
A friend of mine gave me this poem years ago; I had just gotten a masters degree, but unable to find a job in my field I had temped and was finally employed as a “clerk-typist.” I was depressed, and at first this poem depressed me more, because of the concluding sentence, “The pitcher cries for water to carry, and a person for work that is real.” I despaired then of finding work that is real.
Two things have happened over the intervening years, one is that finally, my professional job is really, truly where I want to be, which I know is a rare blessing. More on that in a moment.
The other, and I think more important thing, is that my understanding of “the thing worth doing” shifted. I’ve come to see that sometimes the thing worth doing is just plain not fun, not the thing we meant to do. And yet sometimes with these unpleasant tasks that are just part of life, doing it right still satisfies. I routinely ask myself, “Is this worth doing?” Most recently I asked myself this while folding towels at the pool lost and found. It certainly wasn’t what I felt like doing at the moment, but it was my coop job. Restoring order, reuniting children with a favorite lost item, helping a community function, those all made this task worth doing. So I tried to do it well.
For the past ten of my professional years I was doing work that was kinda-sorta interesting, but often boring, and sometimes felt purposeless. But it served an important purpose and so I tried to do it well. I was working (part-time) at a job related to research on executive pay, pure research not advocacy. This past December I got a job where I am doing work that I’d like to share. I work for CtW Investment Group. Here’s an excerpt from the “Who We Are” page:
“The CtW Investment Group works with pension funds sponsored by unions affiliated with Change to Win to enhance long-term shareholder returns through active ownership.
The long-term health of these pension plans, and the retirement security of the workers and families who rely upon them, are threatened by conflicts of interest on Wall Street and in the boardroom, a corporate backlash that seeks to weaken the accountability of executives to shareholders, and outright corporate fraud. The CtW Investment Group responds to these challenges by organizing workers' capital into an effective voice for corporate accountability and retirement security.”
Most of my work is on executive compensation, and if there’s interest I may do some diaries both on the causes of high comp and maybe some ways the abuses can be addressed.
My Greek amphora, my work, is to research, to understand, possibly to educate, hopefully to reform some of the flaws in the compensation systems as it stands today. I may be of use answering questions about executive compensation, so feel free to fire away below.
Like I said, I’ve been on the site a while. I’ve admired for years the people here who “jump into work head first.” There may be a few “parlor generals” here too (certainly not you, reading this, someone else). But I’m excited to now be a formal member of DK.
Everyone have a great weekend!