A few of my pals and I maintain an accountability tracker to assist us keep on prime of our objectives. Most of us use it to maintain tabs on our weekly freelance assignments. Someday final 12 months, I additionally began utilizing it to observe my studying, which is all I actually do with my free time anyway. My pals couldn’t perceive why these novels wanted to invade our tracker—however I appreciated having my leisure actions on my to-do checklist. Though it rebranded one in every of my favourite hobbies as work, this appeared pure sufficient to me: Something that brings pleasure is severe enterprise.
This murky line between labor and leisure lies on the core of Hwang Bo-reum’s debut novel, Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop. By means of a constellation of characters that orbit the titular retailer, Hwang explores how an individual would possibly select to counter workism with out rejecting work totally, and the way a significant life could be constructed by making use of oneself to even essentially the most pleasurable pastimes.
By Hwang Bo-reum
Yeongju, a former workplace worker in Seoul, is affected by intense burnout: After a career-driven life during which she toiled by way of holidays and noticed her husband of their company canteen extra typically than at residence, she quits her job, information for divorce, and strikes throughout the town for a contemporary begin. She doesn’t know what she desires to do together with her life—however she likes to learn, and makes use of her financial savings to open a bookshop in Hyunam-dong, a neighborhood she chooses as a result of one of many characters in its title means “relaxation.”
However Yeongju rapidly realizes that her new life nonetheless includes work. She is regularly drowning in ebook orders, accounting duties, and stock checks. When she’s not treading water, she’s internet hosting a month-to-month ebook membership or operating a preferred interview collection with authors. Typically she’s going to “stew in remorse” in any respect of her freshly assumed tasks, however she finds that she normally isn’t glad till she completes them.
Her bookshop begins to draw a bunch of regulars and staff who’re equally disillusioned with the company world. By means of them, Hwang explores the totally different kinds that onerous work can take—together with within the service of actions which might be unrelated to creating a dwelling, however add momentum to her characters’ lives. Minjun, the shop’s new barista, dropped out of the rat race after a 12 months of job rejections and spends his days diligently finding out espresso, movies, and yoga. Seungwoo, a dissatisfied former programmer, is “immersing himself within the Korean language.” Jungsuh, who spent eight years as a “everlasting contract” employee till “the anger destroyed [her] physique,” now involves the bookshop to meditate and crochet. Mincheol, a high-school scholar with seemingly little curiosity in life, sits riveted watching Jungsuh’s knitting needles.
Every character has turned away, in a single type or one other, from inherited notions of success and is trying to discover their very own. One night time, a few of them collect to debate a ebook with a becoming theme—David Frayne’s The Refusal of Work. The outpouring of frustration about their careers is acquainted: The company world held no promise of stability, even for many who performed the sport proper; there was all the time one other aim to attain, with out the assure of relaxation. In the meantime, their bosses saved pressuring them to establish as a “workforce” or “household.”
As Yeongju and her pals uncover, although, true “resistance to work,” undertaken intentionally, additionally takes work. After the bookshop’s occasions develop into extra well-liked, Yeongju begins fielding requests to put in writing for varied publications, together with a books column for an area paper; she takes “care and pleasure in writing each bit, regardless that it felt like she needed to squeeze out each final little bit of her mind juices.” She feels an affinity for individuals who “give their utmost to a pursuit” and is initially drawn to Minjun as a result of he begins practising his barista expertise on the bookstore’s “no barista Mondays”—his off days.
Such moments underscore that Hwang’s characters don’t really wish to cease being industrious; they’re simply making an attempt to construct up a extra satisfying understanding of labor for themselves, one which doesn’t bind their “complete id and worth” to an organization. They uncover, for one, the advantages of objectives which might be short-term, easy, and malleable. “As a substitute of agonising over what it is best to do, take into consideration placing effort into no matter you’re doing,” Seungwoo, the programmer turned author, tells Mincheol, the disenchanted high-schooler. Minjun “anchor[s] himself with espresso,” merely specializing in making the perfect cup he can. The purpose is just not for them to obviously outline what makes them glad however fairly to acknowledge the moments during which they’re. What the bookshop’s denizens come to see is that the issues with their former workplace environments—regardless of how widespread—couldn’t all the time clarify why they have been depressing, or educate them how to not be. What they’ll do, as they rethink easy methods to spend their lives, is pay shut consideration to what they’re doing, and do it with care.
In doing so, they bring about a unique that means to the concept of “optimizing” one’s life. They could search to be productive, however they don’t draw back from the conviction that taking life daily—and measuring happiness with out “stak[ing] all the things on a single accomplishment”—can coexist with being prepared to work, not essentially towards an finish aim however for the pleasure of the second. My mom, for one, is all the time engaged with tasks and deadlines that she has set for herself. Although she likes to consider herself as consistently “busy doing nothing,” like Minjun together with his espresso, she has slowly constructed herself right into a formidable bridge participant and a prolific crochet artist. She, too, has accepted that the exterior stress of success is unlikely to be satisfying, however that every sport, accomplished scarf, or cup of espresso is a severe achievement in itself.
By the tip of the story, Yeongju has dedicated to conserving the bookshop open and acknowledged it not simply as her place of relaxation however as her dream, her job, and her supply of pleasure all of sudden. She takes a depart of absence to go on a tour of unbiased bookshops, planning to check what makes them thrive and return to Hyunam-dong with new concepts. Minjun assumes accountability for the bookshop within the meantime. In her farewell notice to him, Yeongju writes:
I had considered work as stairs. Stairs to climb to succeed in the highest. Now, I see work as meals. Meals that you simply want each day. Meals that makes a distinction to my physique, my coronary heart, my psychological well being, and my soul. There’s meals you simply shove down your throat, and meals that you simply eat with care and sincerity. I wish to be one who takes nice care in consuming easy meals. Not for anybody, however for myself.
Her phrases acknowledge the basic distinction between the stress to succeed and the intuition to enhance, the distinction between being a “job seeker” and trying to find significant work. They usually recommend that, maybe, the wisest factor to do is to rise up each day and deal with our minor routines like they matter; to method the varied pockets of our lives, whether or not they’re areas of labor or play, with each flexibility and dedication.
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