The work is never just “the work” | Are.na

what we're looking for is to find work where our work is unmistakably us, where our work is something we can point to and say, "Given who I am and what I see, I made this. I made this for you. Can you please help me make it better?" And when we can do that, our days are totally different than when we're basically sure that an AI is going

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I’ve recently been exploring the metaphor of work as trace – that it isn’t so much about what we put out into the world as how we put it out; that the thing we really ought to care about, the thing that ultimately matters, is the intention from which the work emerges. The rest is all mirror, representation, resemblance.

Reframing “work” as a process of embodied intention not only inverts the relationship between process and output (and makes us question why that relationship ever seemed hierarchical in the first place) but also forces us to prioritize the things that make process more enjoyable, true, delightful and meaningful.