“[L]et me advice you to take up your little burdens again, for though they seem heavy sometimes, they are good for us, and lighten as we learn to carry them. Work is wholesome, and there is plenty for everyone; it keeps us from ennui and mischief, is good for health and spirits, and gives us a sense of power and independence better than money for fashion.
-Marmee”
Source: Little Woman: or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy
“Burnout is the combination of resentment, exhaustion, shame, and frustration that make us lose connection to pleasure and passion in the work, and instead encounter difficult feelings like avoidance, compulsion, control, and anxiety. If it were just exhaustion we could take a break and rest and go back. But people who feel burnt out often feel they cannot return to the work or that the group or work they were part of is toxic.”
Source: Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis
“AI doesn't take any breaks. Plus, AI won't file sexual harassment charges when your boss flirts with it.”
Source: Powdered Saxophone Music
“Who put hard work on the shelf next to jobs? That’s what ruined this country.”
Source: Powdered Saxophone Music
“Lately, it's really been bothering me that, I don't know, the way people work like this every day from morning to night is kind of weird. Hasn't it ever struck you as strange? I mean, all I do here is do the work that my bosses tell me to do the way they tell me to do it. I don't have to think at all. It's like I just put my brain in a locker before I start work and pick it up on the way home. I spend seven hours a day at a workbench, planting hairs into wig bases, then I eat dinner in the cafeteria, take a bath, and of course I have to sleep, like everybody else, so out of a twenty-four-hour day, the amount of free time I have is nothing. And because I'm so tired from work, the "free time" I have I mostly spend lying around in a fog. I don't have any time to sit and think about anything. Of course, I don't have to work at weekends, but then I have to catch up on the laundry and cleaning, and sometimes I go into town, and before I know it the weekend is over”
Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
“Moi, ça me plaît mieux de travailler aux champs, ou de m'occuper des bêtes. Même couper le bois. Mais lui il aime ça, faire la cuisine, le ménage, et aussi le bricolage.”
Source: The Color Purple
“Properly speaking, all true Work is Religion: and whatsoever Religion is not Work may go and dwell among the Brahmins, Antinomians, Spinning Dervishes, or where it will; with me it shall have no harbour. Admirable was that of the old Monks, 'Laborare est Orare, Work is Worship.”
Source: Past and Present
“Once you go Green you will never be BLUE.”
Source: A-Z of Happiness: Tips for Living and Breaking Through the Chain that Separates You from Getting That Dream Job
“The idea that zen, spirituality, or even any religion must live off the donations of their members and communities, lacks creativity. If these organizations do so well at helping people but aren't able to create a sustainable model for themselves, what kind of example is that?”
“Of twenty employees, Carlos says he was the only one who hadn't slept with the receptionist. Talk about a dysfunctional workplace! However, he couldn't immediately quit. How did Carlos survive? “I just did my job,” he told us.”
Source: Rising Above a Toxic Workplace: Taking Care of Yourself in an Unhealthy Environment