On the job

Between subsistence and sustenance:

The question of why we work taken at face value can seem trite. There is, perhaps, however a more fruitful underlying notion. If we do not supply sustenance, as in mental nourishment, how can we be sustained in any way that is more than mere existence: subsistence. 

The  act of work naturally dominates our lives, but considering  the question of why we work perhaps offers a way to more actively balance the vagaries and vicissitudes against the moments, events or mere joyful happenstance, within or without the workplace, that can address the more important aspects of our being, that will allow us to remain interested in the world around us, and from that draw the required sustenance that we sometimes forget that we need.  

See Id of the Ingenu, November 2010, Loo's and Colomina's - On mediated consumption:
'Experience has the built in notion of chance. If it is true that we can only really control half to three quarters of our outcomes, the other part is relevant. But we usually assume its influence will be bad. Perhaps that smaller part is sometimes actually the most interesting and more important bit that provides path splits and tangents as we meander through life.'
http://idoftheingenu.blogspot.com/2010/11/loos-and-colominas.html