From Bill Moyer's interview with Jane Hirshfield in Fooling with Words:

[Teahouse Buddhist] refers to leading your life as if you were an old woman who has a teahouse on the side of the road. Nobody knows why they like to go there, they just feel good drinking her tea. She's not known as a Buddhist teacher... all she does is simply serve tea - but still, her decades of attentiveness are part of the way she does it. No one knows about her faithful attentiveness to her practice, it's just there, in the serving of her tea and the way she cleans the counters and washes the cups.

I've been thinking recently about balancing work and the rest of life, so this passage really struck me. In this view, balance is a matter of integration. Instead of working in her teahouse 9-5 and then practicing Buddhism in the evenings, the old woman makes it so that she practices Buddhism in her work. Even though I'm not a Buddhist, I think a similar concept applies. The things that I do are best when they extend naturally from who I am and what I believe. Doing things just to pay the bills or to please others, I'm less happy and my work just isn't as good.

I'm lucky that I'm at a place where I can do things like work on a casual game when that's what really drives me. I think that shines through in what I do.

I'd be interested in hearing how other people integrate their work with themselves. How do you make sure that what you're doing reflects what you believe?