Love for Your Work
When I was five years old, I grew tired of waiting for my mom to finish talking on the phone. I grabbed a pair of kitchen scissors and snipped the cord connecting the handset to the wall. The call cut off instantly. I did not understand that I had ruined the phone; to me, I had just discovered that electric signals travel through wires. That was the first time I did engineering. It was play back then, and at its best, it is still play today.
Play is not the opposite of hard work. You can take an activity one hundred percent seriously, give it your full concentration, and still be playing.
Erik Thor, Why I Care
Rediscovering Craft
When I forgot work could be fun
As a young programmer, I had nights where I woke up with severe stomach pain from work stress. I worried that if I failed a delivery, I would lose my job and be unable to pay rent. Work felt heavy, threatening, and suffocating. But at the same time, I was playing chess in the evenings for hours—solving complex positional puzzles purely for the fun of finding the right move. Programming is not that different.
The work I thought was beneath me
When I worked in customer service, I used to tell myself the work was beneath me. Yet the moment the phone rang, I was energized. I was curious about who was on the other end of the line, and I loved digging into complex logistics cases and damage disputes. The part of me that found the work stressful kept getting overruled by the part of me that found it fascinating.
The Serious Nature of Play
For a long time, I thought play was about being silly, careless, or irresponsible.
Because my older sister was wild and frequently scolded, I made an unconscious childhood vow: I would be the well-behaved, responsible kid who never caused trouble. By five, adults complimented me on being mature. But in becoming serious, I lost my experimental spirit. I became afraid of making mistakes, calculating every risk before taking action.
When work becomes heavy, forced, and clinical, we lose touch with the natural curiosity that made us start in the first place. You do not have to treat your job like an endurance test. When you approach a complex spreadsheet, a difficult customer case, or a stubborn line of code with the curiosity of a child trying to see how the pieces fit, the dread disappears.
“When I presented a leech on my wrist to my dad as a child and he slapped it away, that was my first code review. Play is how we practice for life.”
Micro-test quiz with 10 questions
Love For Your Work Match
Check off statements above to calculate your match score.
Practical Play & Work Worksheet
Reframe your daily obligations, identify where chronic stress has replaced curiosity, and bring a spirit of play back into your professional craft.
Play Development Guide
Reflection & Practice
Finding Fascinating Work
When did you start believing that work had to feel heavy, painful, or burdensome? What is one part of your daily work that you find genuinely fascinating or satisfying when you look at it through the eyes of curiosity rather than duty?
Continue Your Journey
Take the Eight Forms of Love Test
See how your love for your work balances with your care for yourself, other people, and the living world across 48 reflective questions.
Explore the Book: Why I Care
Read how I reconnected with the joy of play, dropped the burden of chronic work stress, and found meaning in craft.
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