Fun jobs

For the past few days, I've been sealing our slate floor. This particular material covers our entire living room, kitchen, powder room, main stairway and mud room. This is the kind of job I enjoy because it provides me with instant gratification as I can see the difference my work is making over an otherwise dull and uninteresting floor material.

A tangible impact is what makes life worth living and a job worth doing. This is something one appreciates most after a career spend in which most of the daily work had no measurable impact that could be fully appreciated at the end of each day. Instead, the result was that blurry impression that came at the end of a season or of a quarter, and when it happened, the reward was never really able to fully stand apart amidst the drudgery of work. When things didn't go as well as expected, the slap in the face was an unwelcome feedback that always happened too late in the process to brand the desired, positive experience. This is why today, I love whatever can be measured...