There Will Always Be Too Much Work To Do

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This week, I began my new edit­ing job by get­ting into a novel on track to be pub­lished in 2012.

To pre­pare, I read three nov­els, two of which were by other authors in the same genre to get a sense of the "rules" of the genre. The other was the first book in the series. I don't know about you, but three nov­els in a week is a lot for me (although I'm not whin­ing about get­ting paid to read).

On top of that I blogged every day. I led canopy tours at the zipline com­pany where I work. I hosted my par­ents for three days. I put the fin­ish­ing touches on an ebook I'm work­ing on. I answered dozens of com­ments and hun­dreds of emails.

Yada yada yada. You get the pic­ture. It was a busy week.

There's always so much to do.

Sometimes, it can feel like there's too much to do.

Definitely too much to jus­tify tak­ing a day off. No com­puter? No email? No work? Are you stupid?

Six days a week we work. We write, we edit, and we do those mil­lions of lit­tle things that demand our attention.

One day a week, we say no. We don't give into demands. We stop.

Why? As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, "The world has already been cre­ated and will sur­vive with­out the help of man. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else."

You stop because there will always be more work to do. You will never have enough time. Work is a given. You stop because the world has your hands. But the deep­est parts of your being don't belong to the world.

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About the Author

Joe Bunting

Joe is a ghostwriter, editor, and an aspiring fiction author. He writes and edits books that change lives. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

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