Do you need to see the results of your work? What about your work satisfies you?

I have done a lot of analytical and political work in my life. It’s the kind of work where you are trying to influence people. It is the kind of work where often there is no immediate policy change, and it seems like you’ve done all that work for nothing.

For example, from 1990 to 2002, I worked on health care reform. Nothing happened. Eight years after I stopped working on it, something happened. I’d like to think that the work I did laid the groundwork for what happened in 2010 in the US, but even if it is true, there’s no way of knowing.

Other people have jobs where it’s obvious what they’ve done. People who build things or grow things—maybe even people who create physical works of art. But people who create performances are in a different boat. Once they’ve performed, it’s gone. You can’t get it again. You could record it, but that’s not the same. In any case, just about all the artistic work I do is unrecorded. It is for the moment and then it is no longer relevant.

Sometimes I long for work where it is obvious you have accomplished something. I cut some branches down recently, and I finishing bundling them up for the trash man yesterday. There’s a pile of bundled sticks by my house, and it looks like I’ve done something. But that happens rarely in my life.

Does your work satisfy you? Does it give you a result you can see or is it a conceptual result? What is it about the results of your work that makes you feel good (or not, as the case may be)?