Just Working.

I had one of those "I love my job" days today.

See, the best part of what I do is meet interesting people.  Today I started my morning by sitting with a man with a deep and abiding love for the area that we live in, and a vision for ensuring that the work that community organizations do to make this area so special is preserved and supported in perpetuity.  The kind of person that just meeting makes you feel proud.

Then I spent my afternoon at a hundred year old cottage on Browning Island, meeting the brother and sister who are its current guardians.  I say 'guardians' because that is truly what they have been part of here; helping lovingly preserve it much as it was since their grandfather built it in 1908.  It has been a hundred-year task, handed down through generations, and involving regular maintenance and care.  But it's not the heritage of the building that matters most, it is the heritage of what the place has been to four generations: home.  The place where all come together and are at peace.  And in the face of an attitude in the region of "tear it down and replace it with a carbon-copy of the modern, urban home", the simplicity of a building where the only amenity of value is the closeness of family and friends it nurtures is a treasure indeed.

Of course meeting these people and being touched by how much they care for their communities, small and large, is only part of the job.

Now I have to sit down and go through notes and reference materials, listen to the interviews and transcribe their words.  That's the part that feels a little bit like work.

Fortunately, it's always followed by the telling their stories part, where I get to share a little bit with the world what is so interesting and moving about them.  That part, the writing part, is work too, but always rewarding.

But today I'd have skipped it all just to have sat and chatted with each of them a little longer.