The "Real Work"

One of my all-time favorite quotes comes from Henri Nouwen's book Reaching Out:

While visiting the University of Notre Dame, where I had been a teacher for a few years, I met an older experienced professor who had spent most of his life there. And while we strolled over the beautiful campus, he said with a certain melancholy in his voice, "You know . . . my whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.

In 2008, after being laid off from my hospice chaplain job, I had the opportunity to spend a summer doing nothing but finishing up my manuscript for Introverts in the Church. It was a glorious summer. Not only did I have the opportunity to recover emotionally and spiritually from a very demanding ministry, but I was able to live "the writing life." For the first time in my professional life I felt completely at home, like I had found what I was put on this earth to do.

Ever since then I have tried to work the rhythms of my life to revolve around writing. The problem, as everyone warned me but I refused to believe, is that writers just don't make any money. So I took a late-night chaplaincy position with my old hospice, which has brutal hours but enables me to write during the day. I'm trying to book more speaking gigs, which I enjoy but take up a lot of time and energy. I accept other writing assignments that pay well, and I participate in many other professional and educational activities. And I write blog posts, though not as often as I'm "supposed" to.

What I find myself struggling with is defining my book writing as my "real work" and everything else as interruption. I get frustrated when I spend a day in meetings, responding to emails, writing a blog post, even doing a radio interview but don't do any of the real work. Or sometimes I will have a hard night of hospice ministry and will just have no motivation when I wake up (usually around 11AM) to do any writing. I can even spend a whole day doing necessary things yet feel "unproductive" if I don't write at least 1000 words in my book project.

I'm not sure where I get this definition of what comprises real work and what counts as unreal work. Why is it that good, important work can often feel like mere distractions to me? I wonder why I have developed such a hierarchy of work value. Perhaps it's because I'm most passionate about book writing, but I have a suspicion that I have a persistent, internal divide between sacred and secular. The message of the Reformers, that we must not restrict "holy ground" to particular places and activities, has not yet seeped all the way into my heart. I think I have grasped the fact that "ministry" is not to be divided from "normal work" but I have not yet accepted that "creative work" is not to be divided from normal work.

No matter what our sense of call, I think our true life-call is to experience God in all our "interruptions" and in all the ordinariness of daily life, from the profound to the profane. The creativity of God is not that he is injecting extra beauty into the most sublime aspects of human life. The creativity of God is such that he is able to shape all the necessary and boringly human aspects of this existence into works of beauty.

Quiet

I'm at the Sundance film festival in Park City, Utah this week, attending the world premier of LUV, a movie my brother-in-law wrote. I've been able to mingle with some fascinatingly creative people, including some big-name actors. I'm a total poseur here, if you hadn't guessed that already.

I'm typing this on my phone, so I'll keep it brief. I have talked up Susan Cain's book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, quite a bit, and today it finally releases! I absolutely love the book. Its vision is large, as Susan covers the extroverted bias in the corporate world, in education, and even in megachurches.

I'll tell you one thing: Hollywood types talk A LOT. Which is why I'm hiding out with a copy of Susan's book this afternoon.

Introvert Saturday: Writing the Words, Living the Story

About the author: Adele Konyndyk is a freelance writer and INFP based in Hamilton, Ontario. When she’s not at her desk she’s probably eating cheese or browsing a used bookshop. You can follow her on Twitter.

I’ve had an introverted personality all my life and loved to write stories since I started putting sentences to paper. I’m an introvert. I’m a writer. And these are aspects of identity that I own up to openly, happily, and even proudly.

Well. Most days.

And I certainly didn’t at first.

I learned the word “introvert” while writing a short story for a high school English class on archetypes—universal images, plots, and characters used in literature across the ages—and their root in the gospel story. We read Steinbeck’s Cain-and-Abel-ish novel East of Eden, studied Greek myths and Shakespearean plays. I loved that stories could be both current and classic—that people could be paradoxes of unique elements and universal characteristics.

Not that I wore this love loudly. I talked little in class, already sure then I could articulate much better in writing than verbally But, as friends and family knew, it was one of my favourite classes. I was thrilled, also, that our final project could be a creative piece instead of an essay.

Somewhere in my story research into psychologist Carl Jung’s archetypes I rustled up his theories on introverted and extroverted personality types.

And they stuck. My story’s main character was a by-the-book INFP—opinionated but soft-spoken, intuitive but misread by others, creative but insecure. His name, was an allusion to the prophet who, to me, seemed to me the perfect example of an introverted ‘hero,’ and one scene between him and his mother was even modeled after Jeremiah’s calling.

This teenage creation was, of course, a completely unselfconscious literary masterpiece that led me, henceforth, to confidently share my writing with the world. It also caused me to proclaim myself “an introvert!” and glory in the very traits that had made me feel awkward or misunderstood.

Or…not.

Back then I couldn’t yet admit an upside to being one who often prefers to listen rather than speak or ponder rather than comment. I was stalled in my own fears and anxieties—my own attitude of “Alas, I do not know how to speak.” And it would be years before I’d admit that writing was more to me than the ability to embroider an assignment for a decent grade, but a gift of vocation.

This high school story did show me, however, that writing was a way for me to stay alert to joy. My teacher highlighted metaphors he liked and observations he found vivid. He also—and I think more importantly—pointed out places where he sense play, adding comments such as “you’re having fun, here!” beside inventive turns of phrase. I had to admit that I was having fun, here—and, in the process, somehow also speaking to larger truths about living authentically out of our differences.

Over the years, I’ve been blessed to encounter many individuals with this same gracious attitude toward my work—and toward my personality. I’ve had—and continue to have—teachers, mentors, and friends who encourage me to live into and serve out of all elements of my identity. They don’t make me feel odd, for example, on nights I prefer solitude over a visit or one-on-one conversations over chatter in a crowded room. They understand when I want to express thoughts and feelings in writing (are patient, even, with oddly-long emails!). They remind me that I write because I like it. I suppose I could call them the notes in the margins of my life that help keep me alert to joy and affirm my God-given personality.

They’re also the much-needed voices of warning. When I wimp out, they call me on it. Some days I still act as if being an introvert and bring a writer are two burdens to endure. I diminish their delights and shirk the discipline they deserve. I fritter away time set aside for writing or contemplation because I’m too afraid to do real interior work. I refuse to share myself with new people, or my writing with anyone. I don’t set out to. I know it’s silly—cowardly. But, it happens

I am continually grateful for those who, in such times, talk me back into the fullness of my identity—not just as an introvert or a writer, but as a child of God. He is the very Father who told Jeremiah to stand up, go, and speak the words he had been given—who assured him, and assures us all, the he will be with us as we testify to the true story we have all been lovingly designed to tell.