Here in the United States it is Labor Day, the one day of the year set aside to provide the working man with a reason to celebrate. Now, as in 1882 when the holiday was created, most workers have little to make merry about. (See The History of Labor Day" on the U.S. Department of Labor web site.)
This Labor Day, I challenged myself to find my own reasons to celebrate, and they are many. I have worked since I was 14 years old — back then, children were allowed to work up to 15 hours per week with the proper permit. And although I'm eligible for early retirement (and often threaten to grasp the opportunity), it's likely I will work until I die — not because I have to, but because I can't imagine life without work.
Let me explain; by "work", I don't mean the services I perform for the State of New York, my employer these last 28 years. I mean work, a thing a person does to share his or her worth with the world. I've been very, very fortunate in life. I've found three core things that give me enormous pleasure: web development, literature, and art.
When many people hear the term "web development," they are likely to visualize some geek with dyed hair, jeans, T-shirt, and sandals (piercings and tattoos optional) sitting behind a 40-inch monitor creating obscure and inscrutable site designs, their feet up on the desk and earbuds clogging their ears.
My world of web development is much different, but to me, just as exciting. To me, web development is a discipline, an art form with clearly defined rules and unlimited potential. My nut is to work within those rules to extend that unlimited potential to people with disabilities.
Add to that challenge training others in that discipline within a political system that is often uncaring and sometimes downright hostile, in an environment with negative resources (an oxymoron, true, but there it is) and mix in various supervisory and administrative responsibilities, and you've described my day job. And I love it.
This summer, I took a vacation to indulge another of my cherished forms of work, designing and fabricating silver jewelry. I've always loved art, as long as I can remember. At first, it was crayons and coloring, then pencils and drawing, then painting, and now jewelry. When I finish this Labor Day essay, I will go off to work on a piece of jewelry commissioned by a colleague, one of the many side jobs I do to earn enough money to pay for flashquake's contributor stipends.
The Fall issue of flashquake marks the end of our seventh year of publication — 28 issues of our journal — and the beginning of our eighth year. Dozens of people have worked hard, reading hundreds of submissions each reading period, pitching in to help with editing, contests, interviews, and award nominations, making sure that as many people as possible are exposed to quality flash literature, presented in a manner that does credit to our contributors.
We have partnered with the one person we all have in common, flash fiction guru Pamelyn Casto, to share our love of flash literature with any who care to take it up. Once again, this work helps to pay the stipends of flashquake's contributors, and helps flashquake's editors continue with their labor of love.
I once took Pam's Flash Fiction class, the same online class that is being offered in October through our site (see the "online classes" link to the left). Over the next few years, I wrote hundreds of stories, not all works of art, to be sure, but all of them helping me to express and hone my love of literature. Today, I received a request from someone in Germany, who found some of my older stories online and asked for permission to use them in helping German students to study English literature. What a way to start the day — with a wonderful acknowledgement of my work.
So today I celebrate work. I hope that everyone is lucky enough to find work that they love. And I thank you all for sharing the work of flashquake. I hope that you find it as rewarding as we do.