Marlee Grace - How to Not Always Be Working

H ere is a book, a workbook, a guide, an ode to not knowing.

I wrote it first as a tiny zine that I typed up on my typewriter. I glued all the words down and scanned in the pages, printed them out, and stapled them together. I wrote it for myself. The more I shared the little workbook with other people, the more I found that my friends were also in deep need of this process of identifying our work.

Learning how to not always be working isnt about working less or never working or never having a job. Its about starting to personally determine for ones self the concept of work. To ask the questions: Why does it matter? What does it mean? How do you always show up for yourself?

Hint: Its all work, the only rule is work. This is working, the diving in. And it feels so good. It is a gift, and my gratitude overflows that typing this very introduction is indeed my work.

I made a decision to be my own boss at some point, but it was sort of an accident. I mean, Ive always been pretty bossy (Im a big sister, a performer, a manifester of sorts), so it wasnt a far leap to be my own boss. But with a BFA in dance and no real business training or, hell, any training on being a person, I started to really sink. Well, not sink, but like not tread and not swim. I would sort of do the butterfly and then the breaststroke and be really good at them, then all of a sudden find myself on my back looking at the sky in utter appreciation with water entering my ears. It was like being in a dream but also being afraid that if I shifted, I might not remember how to swim again.

I actually took swimming lessons a few times and am pretty good at swimming. It is to this day my absolute favorite way to not work: to enter Tomales Bay or Lake Michigan and swim as far out as I can, no phone in hand, no to-do list (the words would smear, ya know), keeping the sadness at bay. It was the moment I thought, What if I got a waterproof phone case? I could swim and work at the same time! that I knew I had taken it too far (the working).

So here we are.

When I began thinking about this topic it was spring of 2015, and I was living in Michigan, married, and running a shop and artists residency called Have Company. I had picked up knitting as a way to copewith anxiety, depression, being a person in recovery, and generally being easily distracted.

Without much thought (that is generally how I make decisionsimpulsiveness can be the truest way to express passion for being alive), I decided it would be a great idea to start selling yarn at Have Company. I reached out to a yarn company, ordered a ton of yarn, and then all of a sudden was facing a very big and weird problem. Selling yarn and knitting were now part of my job. I had turned this HOBBY that HEALS me into my WORK.

It didnt stop there. Every time I would sit down with my partner, I was working. I was checking email on my phone. When I was knitting, I was documenting the knitting and the quilting process. It was all part of my work. And in this case, when I say work, I mean the way that I am generating income for my small business. My work consumed me in a way that was no longer giving me life, but I was obsessed and couldnt really see clearly what had gone wrong.

In the end, a few things shifted. My marriage ended, and I decided to close my space and move to California. I came to Oakland, a place I had many friendsbut quickly knew it was not my home. I traveled north to Point Reyes to go for a hike one day and immediately knew it was where I wanted to land, and I am so grateful to call this rural place my home. That day, I drove by a cow giving birth. The calf slipped out of its mother, and it was the sweetest invitation for me to slow down, pay better attention, and nest here.

I write this as a twenty-nine-year-old, on the brink of the peak of my Saturn return. Today I ate breakfast with my partner and told them a hundred fears I have about WHO WILL I BE when this document comes out in a year. I am filled with fear, but the point is, I still show up and I still make things. It isnt that the fear goes away. They might not be my partner in a year; I might not live in Californiathere is no knowing. And that is the greatest gift: the groundlessness.

Becoming my own boss was the best thing I ever decided to do and also the hardest. I mostly do whatever I want whenever I want to and dont have anyone telling me what to do. But Im also completely and totally on my own, with no safety net and only myself to fall back on. And sometimes thats a scary thing. I can slip into patterns of dishonoring myself: ignoring bills, overworking one side of my business and not paying enough attention to the other, forgetting that exercise is a thing, depleting my body with too much refined sugar, ignoring emails for weeks, taking great cell phone pictures but producing no blog posts or real meat to go with them.

This book isnt just for folks who are their own boss. It is for everyone who wants to understand the different categories of their life. And for people who hate categories and want to tell me its all just the same, this book is for you, too. Its just a book, its just a thing I made, really. You can read it with a friend, you can give it to a friend.

This is for people with a nine-to-five who come home and cant seem to close their computers, for the nurse who picks up every single extra shift so she doesnt have to face self-care and ritual. Its for anyone who is using work or tasks or habits as a way of escaping their truest self, which, if you ask me, is making something: a home, a baby, a recipe, a shop, an installation, a new dance, a blanket.

Much of my work and research as an artist and a dancer are led by the words of women: Julia Cameron and Angeles Arrien. Both of these womens writings about being an artist, the tarot, cross-cultural studies, and showing up in a radical and wild way guide me in my own path. Although I never met Angeles while she was alive, I am grateful to have mentors who passed down her work. Two other books that have had a great impact on me as I wrote this one were Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown and How to Be Bored by Eva Hoffman. I am just so endlessly grateful for others who are putting in the work and research on how our lives exist in this digital age, which is so chaotic and dizzying at times.

This book is a labor of yes. A labor of saying yes to the process, a labor of showing up, taking time, taking a time-out. You can read it all in one go and take notes. You can fill its blank areas with your own lists. I included a lot of my own lists and asked some of my friends for some of theirs, too. Hanging out with my friends even when we are sort of working is my greatest way to not work. I mean, its a gray area, but its human and makes me feel whole and not so disconnected. My phone screenthat tends to disconnect me.