Worth Your While

While zipping through the bookstore the other day with my two year old, a magazine in the business section caught my eye…not its design but the what it said on the cover: "Joy + Meaning-We're talking about your work." With no time to browse, I grabbed the magazine Worthwhile, and swung through the register on the way to lunch. Turns out that I picked up the premier issue of a new magazine who's mission is to help p work with purpose, passion and profit. As someone who owns a freelance fine art and design studio, I would be happy for just one of these three consistently in my work, much less all three at once.

Although business oriented, Worthwhile's appearance in an overly crowded business periodical field signifies the growing need for all of us to not only be profitable in our design business, but also connect with our passion and purpose.

Take Worthwhile's interview with Matthew Fox, an Episcopal priest and author of The Reinvention of Work. Fox says that "it became clear to me as I listened to people's stories over the years that work is where lives are really played out. More than in church, this is where we pour our blood, sweat and tears. You spend years getting educated and trained for work, then you go to work, then you recover from work, you raise kids hoping they get work and then life is over. If we are going to look hard at impacting culture and history with values that are worth passing on, work is the place." That insight alone is worth the cost of the magazine.

Worthwhile also delves into the personal side of work, like Constance Barkley-Lewis' article on "Identity Theft." As the senior vice president of marketing for TBS Superstation, she suddenly found herself a casualty of a merger. As she says " My corporate success had made me lose sigh of why I'd gotten into Turner in the first place. I hadn't lost myself when I lost my job; I'd lost myself when I'd found success." Priceless.

I think there are some nuggets in this first issue of Worthwhile. Give it a read.