Working on a Dream: Is It Your Job or Your Calling?

They are not the same thing

The past 18 months have made all of us rethink a lot of things, work being foremost among them. Initially the lockdowns and social distancing forced us to adapt to new ways to do our jobs, from working remotely at home instead of commuting to an office to holding Zoom meetings in our pajamas rather than sitting around a conference room table. For far too many, it has meant trying to find a new job in hard times when their old one did not survive the pandemic.

It’s gone beyond the mere logistics of how we work, however. More and more, as we were cut off from friends and family and saw on the news every day just how fleeting and fragile life really is, many of us started asking why we do the work we do. Is a cubicle farm or a soul-crushing retail job that pays less than picking up aluminum cans on the side of the road really how we want to spend our lives? Is that really all there is to our brief time on this planet?

For me, this was an ongoing inner debate. For decades before the pandemic, I had bitched about work (we all do), yet did nothing to change it. I complained about a middle management job in one of those cubicle farms until being laid off after 20 years. Then I complained about the beating of a retail job I had for years after that.

But in the spring of this year, after one too many dustups with belligerent maskless customers, it stopped being a hypothetical question. I was 55 years old and miserable. According to the CDC life-expectancy calculator, I can expect to live roughly another 24 years, assuming there is no zombie apocalypse before then. With far fewer years ahead of me than behind, it was time to stop complaining and do something.

So I did. Much to the chagrin of my employers, who want their wage-slaves available at all times, I took a leave of absence from that ass-whipping retail job and started writing full-time. Then I just never went back. Oddly, and maybe because I was a supervisor, though the leave ran out in May, they still haven’t actually fired me. Every two weeks or so, I get a certified letter from the corporate office saying: “Your leave has ended; if you do not contact us within seven days we will assume you have resigned.” I’ve gotten four of those letters, and each one goes straight in the trash.

In the almost six months since that leave started I have written every day, the longest unbroken stretch of writing in my life. Not coincidentally, it’s the happiest I’ve been since the last time I saw Springsteen in concert. It’s been an almost surreal experience.

That’s not to say it hasn’t been tough. I was fortunate enough to have a few months’ expenses saved up (like Hemingway did before he quit journalism to write fiction full-time, though I am clearly no Hemingway). At the moment, writing is bringing in just enough each month to keep me from dipping too far into that savings cushion. A medical emergency could wipe me out (like 90% of us out there), but as the insurance I had while employed was so minimal as to not be insurance at all, this would have been true even if I had stayed there.

So what’s my point in sharing this? My point is that there is work, and then there is your calling. Some call it your passion, your purpose, whatever. A few lucky souls know that calling almost from birth (we do a huge disservice to our kids by expecting them to know theirs at 18 when they pick a college major), some discover it late in life, and some never think about it enough to ever learn what it is, content to sleepwalk for 75 years straight into the grave. Whenever you discover yours, seize it.

Taking such a bold step is no simple task and is often unpopular with both society and those closest to us. “Fortune favors the bold” is a common slogan, but it is usually only those who are already fortunate who say it, as they quickly pull up that ladder of success after they reach a new rung. When the leap of faith you take is into anything creative (writing, music, art, film) the journey becomes that much harder. We may be the worst society in history when it comes to valuing money more than art.

But, to steal the name of the latest Marvel series, “what if?” What if for just once our round-peg selves said no to being hammered into that square hole society created for us without ever knowing us? What would life be like then, without the hours-long commute, no more endless spreadsheets or angry customers, and not simply surviving Monday through Friday to get to the weekend?

In all honesty, the answer is likely to be struggle and pain and, for many, failure. As for me, I don’t know how this will all work out long-term; writing is one of the hardest ways to make a living there is. I’ve written four books that have not put me anywhere close to fame or fortune. The articles I write here could disappear tomorrow if the site closed down. People read less now than ever before.

Yet I’m prouder of those four wildly unsuccessful novels than anything I ever did on a retail sales floor; they will live on after me, which that toaster oven I sold certainly won’t. I have developed relationships with writers from around the world that never would have happened otherwise. I look forward to each new day because I get to write. In short, while my bank balance has dropped some, my quality of life has skyrocketed. It’s pretty easy to see which of those has more value.

As with most things in my life since I first heard “Born to Run” at 9 years old, where I was versus where I am now can be summed up with Springsteen lyrics. As I trudged along simply doing work, the verse I would hear was from “The River:”

Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse?

Today, as I type these words that will be read by people I will never meet, finally heeding my calling feels a lot more like this verse from “Better Days:”

These are better days baby These are better days it’s true These are better days Better days are shining through

Leave it to Bruce to say it better than I ever could.

All lyrics by Bruce Springsteen and found on www.brucespringsteen.net.