An original song about work, time, and the life waiting outside the clock
Lyrics
Verse 1
Alarm goes off while the whole house sleeps
Coffee in a cup and a promise to keep
Another early morning, another late night
Another little piece of a disappearing life
They say work hard and you’ll get ahead
So we trade our hours for the bills getting paid
And nobody tells you when you’re twenty-five
How fast forty comes when you’re working all the time
Pre-Chorus
There’s always one more thing that can’t wait
One more reason to come home late
Chorus
We give our days, we give our nights
Give our strong backs and the best years of our lives
Tell the ones we love, “Just give me some time”
While we’re giving all our time away
There’s always more money, always more work
Always somebody saying they need you there first
But someday you look back at the life that you lived
And wonder what you got
For all the hours you give
Verse 2
Some work the mill, some work the mine
Some wear a suit underneath fluorescent lights
Some drive all night, some punch a clock
Some answer emails when they ought to stop
Different uniforms, different names
But the working man’s bargain still feels the same
Be the one they call, be the one who stays
Be proud that you can carry what should take three
And somewhere a dinner gets cold on a plate
Somebody who loves you learns how to wait
Chorus
We give our days, we give our nights
Give our strong backs and the best years of our lives
Tell the ones we love, “Just give me some time”
While we’re giving all our time away
There’s always more money, always more work
Always somebody saying they need you there first
But someday you look back at the life that you lived
And wonder what you got
For all the hours you give
Verse 3
Still, there are moments worth holding onto
Sun coming up through an old factory view
Laughing with people who worked by your side
Finding something beautiful in a hell of a night
That’s why it ain’t simple, that’s why it’s hard
You can love the people and still carry the scars
You can miss that place and still understand
A job should earn your labor, not own who you are
Bridge
Your children won’t stay young
Your parents won’t stay strong
That person waiting up for you
Won’t be waiting forever
And nobody lying at the end of their road
Ever wished they’d answered
One more call from work
Final Chorus
So give your work what the work deserves
Give it your effort, your pride and your word
But save something good for the people at home
Save something for yourself when the working day’s gone
There’ll always be money
There’ll always be work
There’ll always be somebody saying theirs comes first
But a life isn’t measured by how much you did
It’s who you came home to
It’s the moments you lived
It’s knowing what’s worth
The hours you give
Outro
We all get the same twenty-four every day
Be careful who you let
Take yours away.
What this song is about
The Hours We Give is about something a lot of people know from the inside. We work hard because people depend on us. We take the extra shift, answer one more call, stay a little later, carry more because we know we can. There is real pride in that. There is also a cost, and this song lives between those two truths.
It is not about rejecting hard work. It is about how quietly work can consume the time we thought we were earning for later. Children grow up. Parents get older. Relationships change. Another birthday passes, another year disappears, and we keep telling ourselves there will be more time until one day we look back and ask what we got for all the hours we gave.
The story behind the song
For years I took pride in being the person who could handle whatever was thrown at me.
At McKinley Paper Mill that sometimes meant seventeen hours in a day. There were shifts where I covered two or three positions at the same time, Fourth Hand, Fifth Hand and Wrapline, or Backtender and Winderman, moving between heavy machinery for twelve or more hours on almost no sleep. When something jammed or broke down or stopped moving, I was one of the people others came looking for. I liked that. I liked being dependable, knowing the equipment, walking into a bad situation and getting things moving again while the people around me visibly eased at the sight of me coming.
There was pride in that life. There were also friendships built during impossible nights, dark humor that made exhaustion bearable, and conversations that only happen between people who have been awake far too long. Every so often the sun would come up over the water and make an industrial mill look beautiful. Those are memories I still value, and they are what makes this story complicated.
I did not hate the mill. I still miss parts of it.
But being capable of carrying everything slowly became the reason to keep carrying more. Another uncovered shift became my problem. Another breakdown needed my attention. Another long day was something I could handle because I had handled the last one. Being needed felt a lot like being valued, and for a long time I did not question the difference.
Then, on August 24, 2024, the mill shut down.
I did not leave because I had decided I was finished with that life. The decision was made for me. A career, a routine, a community and a large part of the identity I had built around being useful disappeared at once. There was no overtime shift I could take to fix it. There was no machine I could get running again. For the first time in years, working harder was not the answer.
So I adapted. I went back to college, and the intensity that had kept me running between machines came with me. A 3.97 GPA, the President’s List every quarter, the Peninsula College Moving Pictures Film Festival two years running, documentary work for campus and community organizations, and a full course load straight through, summers included. The drive had not gone anywhere. What changed was where I pointed it. I was putting the same effort toward a future I had chosen instead of answering the next demand somebody placed in front of me.
With enough distance from the mill, I could finally see what I could not see while I was living it. I had spent years telling myself that working harder was how I built a better life. Sometimes I worked so hard that I neglected the life all of that effort was supposed to support.
That is where this song came from.
It is not a song about quitting. It is not anti-work, and it is not a rejection of ambition. I am proud of how hard I worked, proud that people could count on me, proud of the people I worked beside and what we did together. I am also proud that when the life I knew disappeared, I found a way to build something else. The lesson was never that I should have cared less.
A job should earn your labor, not own who you are.
It can deserve your effort, your pride and your word. It should not automatically get everything simply because you are capable of giving it. Eventually the shift ends. Sometimes the whole mill closes. What is left is the people you loved, the moments you lived, the person you became, and whatever you decide to do with the hours you still have.
One of those nights
These photographs are from the kind of nights behind the words. The machinery. The breakdowns. The exhaustion. The people beside you, and the strange moments of humor and beauty that somehow existed in the middle of all of it. At the time these hours felt ordinary. Looking back, they turned out to be the story.
Before it became a song
Before this was a song, it was a class assignment.
For an identity essay in English Composition, I wrote a piece called The Weight of the Cape. I used Superman as a way to examine something I had always treated as pure strength: when I decide something matters, I can give nearly everything I have to it. Writing it forced a harder question than I expected. Not how much can I carry, but what deserves that in the first place.
Partway through, I put down a sentence and stopped.
I was working hard to build a better life, but sometimes I worked so hard that I neglected the life I was trying to build.
My professor asked to use the essay as a sample for future students, which I was proud of. But the response is not what stayed with me. The sentence was. Everything in The Hours We Give grew out of it.
Your hours have a story too
Something happened when I started sharing this song. People started telling me their stories. Not stories about hating their jobs, stories about loving what they did and still recognizing what it cost. Decades-long careers. Years of overtime. Missed time at home. Bodies worn down by the work. Sacrifices that built the life they wanted, and sacrifices they now wish they had measured differently.
That matters to me, because The Hours We Give was never meant to tell anyone whether their hours were worth it. Only they can answer that. For one person, the overtime built the retirement they had dreamed about. For another, a career they loved asked more of their body or their family than they understood at the time. Most lives are more complicated than either regret or pride. Mine certainly is.
Different uniforms, different names. Some work the mill, some work the mine, some answer emails when they ought to stop. The bargain tends to feel the same from the inside.
The current video pairs the song with aerial cinematography from the Olympic Peninsula. A larger music video may follow eventually, but I do not want to hire a cast and ask them to pretend this story belongs to them. I would rather hear from the people who already recognize themselves in it.
If this song reminds you of your career, your family, something you sacrificed, something you gained, someone who waited up for you, or the moment you decided your time needed to belong somewhere else, I want to hear about it. Those stories may decide what The Hours We Give becomes next.
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