The Work Itself

I’ve had a similar conversation with maybe a half-dozen people recently, about how “work”—in the sense of doing what one does to make a living, and especially creative work—has slowly grown in definitional scope to encompass things well beyond the work itself.

It’s possible, if you’ve already become a well-known entity, to make a living just writing, just painting, just making music or food or whatever else. You have a name and probably other people to handle the other stuff for you.

But f...