The inimitable Mandy Brown reminds us that the f*cks we have to give are a limited resource. Spend them in the right place:
Why love your work? It won’t, of course, love you back. It can’t. Work isn’t a thing that can love. It isn’t alive, it isn’t and won’t ever be living. And my answer is: don’t. Don’t give a f*ck about your work. Give all your f*cks to the living. Give a f*ck about the people you work with, and the people who receive your work—the people who use the tools and products and systems or, more often than not, are used by them. Give a f*ck about the land and the sea, all the living things that are used or used up by the work, that are abandoned or displaced by it, or—if we’re lucky, if we’re persistent and brave and willing—are cared for through the work. Give a f*ck about yourself, about your own wild and tender spirit, about your peace and especially about your art. Give every last f*ck you have to living things with beating hearts and breathing lungs and open eyes, with chloroplasts and mycelia and water-seeking roots, with wings and hands and leaves. Give like every f*ck might be your last.
Because here’s what I’ve learned: if you give your f*cks to the unliving—if you plant those f*cks in institutions or systems or platforms or, gods forbid, interest rates—you will run out of f*cks.
