On Monday we’ll celebrate Labor Day in the United States. It was made an official holiday in 1894 to honor workers. It was during the Industrial Revolution when workers faced long, unsafe hours (per Wikipedia). The length of the day and standards have greatly changed since that time. I was a child growing up on a farm in the 60s and remember the long hours of barning or harvesting tobacco. There were no child labor laws if your father was a farmer; you worked until the job was done.

Over the years we’ve moved to modern technology and work that isn’t dependent on daylight. While physical labor is easier to define by the standards of earlier generations, the work that is done today can be carried out at any time day or night. There’s no clear “ending time” like there was with farm labor. That’s also true for household chores like washing and drying clothes; no more waiting until morning to get that wet laundry on the clothesline.

While there are many advantages to being able to labor without the natural limits of a day, there are disadvantages. When you were raised to work hard, as soon as you finished one task, you were given another. When you stopped was determined by your parent or employer. Now with so many people working independently with minimal supervision, each person has to develop a sense of when it’s time to stop, when they’ve reached their peak of efficiency.

The work I do now is writing. Last week I put in a lot of hours on a project and reached a point where I could go no longer; I’d emptied my creative well. But part of me felt like I shouldn’t stop, it wasn’t the end of the day. I pushed on hoping effort would yield results. But eventually, I saw that my effort was in vain. I needed a break from writing and time to relax and refill my well.

That day I’d read an article from The Aligned Life website entitled, “On the Solution That Comes in Sideways.” This portion resonated with me: “Many of us absorbed the belief that if it was not hard, it did not count. That belief costs us the lightness and play that much real creativity depends on. None of this means your effort is misplaced. Your willingness to work is genuinely valuable. The invitation is not to stop trying. It is to notice when the grinding has stopped working, and to trust that stepping away is sometimes the more intelligent move.”

I stepped away from my writing for the remainder of that day, taking a break to do household tasks as well as to binge watch a series on Netflix. I filled my well enough to draw from it on the following day when I sat down to my laptop.

Sometimes we buy into what has been handed down without looking at the context. The rules about working hard applied on the farm because there was limited time when crops could be planted and harvested. Now my work requires me to listen to my internal clock, my intuition about when my work is flowing and when it’s grinding and not producing the desired results.

Last week I sat in a doctor’s office waiting room wearing white Bermuda shorts and a bright blue shirt. An older woman sitting across from me commented on how she liked my colorful blouse. I thanked her and added more ‘backstory’ to our conversation.

“Yeah, I wanted to wear these white shorts one more time before Labor Day,” I told her. “They used to say you shouldn’t wear white after that.”

She smiled and said, “Yes, we used to go by that. But I don’t think any rules apply about anything today.”

I never knew who made up the “don’t wear white after Labor Day” rule until I was looking up the history of the holiday for this post. This is what I found on Wikipedia:

“In the fashion world, Labor Day was once considered the last day it was acceptable to wear white or seersucker. The source of the tradition lies in part with the migration of wealthy 19th century New Yorkers back from their summer-home Newport Mansions and accompanying change back from summer clothes.”

With the 100-degree days we’ve been having this week in North Carolina, I don’t think I’ll be having a “change back from summer clothes” for a while. Besides I’m not a “wealthy 19th century New Yorker.” My shorts will be fine for my regular life until the days actually grow cooler here in the South.

As we celebrate Labor Day, may we find our own way of determining how long and how hard we work. Like those rules about wearing white, some things have outlived their usefulness. Sometimes letting go and making time for play results in an inspiration that would have been blocked by striving.

Best to you,

Connie