Working Hard, or Hardly Working?

Pictured: Baxter, our oldest cat, snoozing away in his rocking chair. 

My father loves puns and joke sayings. Every time he'd come home after a long day at work, he'd greet my brother and I by asking us what we'd learned for the day -  "color me surprised" was one of his favorite lines he'd say when we'd tell him something he didn't know; he grew up one of seven children, and was one of the only ones in his family to graduate high school. He wanted a better for his own kids, and worked himself to the bone to make sure my brother and I could both get a good education and have what we needed to thrive in life. Whenever we'd say goodbye to him, he'd tell us that we better not go off and rob any banks - an old and strange family farewell that I think carried down from his own dad - something he knew we'd never do, but also jokingly never promised.

As I've grown older, graduated high school and then university, he's moved to greeting my brother and I with "are you working hard, or hardly working?" whenever we visit. The answer was always the former - never really the latter, which seemed to garner both his approval and disappointment at the same time, as though he wanted us to admit to slacking in our young adult lives. I never really understood why; that is, I didn't have an inkling as to why until I'd gotten older. Now, I think maybe he wanted us to do more playing and exploration in our youth, and to avoid the same struggles he had in his own. He wanted our success, sure, but more than anything he wanted our joy. That's probably why I'm here writing this, pivoting my life on the notion of a dream I've had for a while after saving up enough to light the spark.

Stationery and I have had a casual flirtation that has bordered on the "will-they, won't-they" phase for almost a decade. My first love was a Pilot Metropolitan Medium nib that I got in 2016. I loved the look of the glossy Pilot cartridge ink on paper, and I loved writing with it. A new hobby in stationery and pen collecting was born! It's been slow-going as I have accumulated pens and paper over the years and learned more about this world piece by piece. As time wore on, my love was shelved for a while in favor of hobbies I could perform on my morning commute without getting train-sick (🙃). But, my passion for stationery was reignited in the last year as I've sent letters to relatives of mine and found great joy in the creative process of customizing or making my own stationery. I've also been inspired by the passion of this industry and the heartwarming people who participate in it regularly. As my relationship with this hobby and its extensions has bloomed, I've realized that it's time that stationery and I got serious. 

Part of that is also that I've always had this romantic - potentially weird - notion of owning a small business in my hobby spaces. My grandfathers on both sides of the family owned hauling companies, and my father has put his heart and soul into his own machinery services work. Although we sometimes don't see eye to eye, I have a strong admiration for the work they've put in and the companies that have blossomed from their efforts. I've certainly considered having a retail business in the past, but always felt it wasn't the right time. Now having worked in the tech industry for quite a number of years, I've found that one thing I have sorely lacked is regular connection with people and personal fulfillment in my work. While talking over these woes with a friend, that same question I've been asking myself all these years came up - "why don't you just start your own business?", and I found the long-replied answer of "it's not the right time" no longer felt correct. 

It's been an interesting journey so far - learning a lot of things that I've never done before, and taking that first step into something new and unknown is certainly both scary and exciting. There's some pressure and anxiety there, too: starting a business in a family that has had success with starting their own ventures. Maybe I'll fail? But even if that happens, there's also the realization that the thought of failure doesn't scare me as much as it did in my youth - that failure is just another opportunity to learn and grow. That all said, I'm filled with reassurance that when the holidays roll around this year, I'll have a much better answer to the question my father asks us every time we go to visit him.

So am I working hard, or hardly working? 

The truth is - when you love what you're doing, you never work a day in your life.