The Difference Between a Job and a Calling

It was late one evening in October.

It was the kind of late night that exposed the restless striving with which my soul was beginning to contend.

I had started to realize that the rat race was not taking me anywhere. It was keeping me suspended in a holding pattern.

Paycheck to paycheck.

Shift after shift.

I was so focused on the frustration that I could no longer see how much of my life had been orbiting around the chaos.

Somewhere along the way, I had tethered myself to an anchor of despair. This weight was bound by self-imposed chains of regret, longing, bad habits and unmet desires.

Have you ever had the kind of late night when the unanswered questions or unsaid statements suddenly become an existential crisis?

I have no children.

I am not married.

I have no prospects.

And in four days, on August 25, I will turn forty-four years old.

There are certain birthdays that come and go quietly.

And then there are those ages that kick the door open and drag you across the threshold. That is how forty-four feels to me.

When I allowed myself to reflect on the facts of my life, I was disturbed.

I sat with my disturbance. I did not rush to fix it.

I put it in the middle of the table.

I looked at it.

I poked it and turned it over.

I got to know it.

Upheaval is most often met at a crossroad.

Valleys where decisions are made eventually present us with a choice; deny the crisis, or hug the cactus.

There is something strangely useful about allowing an uncomfortable truth to remain uncomfortable long enough to teach you something.

Mine began with a deceptively simple question.

What is my job?

That one was easy enough to answer. A job is a structure you enter.

Jobs have hours and expectations.

Someone tells you where to stand, what to do and when you can leave.

A job is an exchange of labor for money.

Sitting there cuddling my cactus, I asked myself a question.

What is my work?

I started thinking. Work is more like a calling.

The work I am called to do is like a fire that burns deep in my soul. Like a constant nagging to persevere even when I do not want to.

I believe I find my work in the dreams and ideas that continue to re-surface in conscious thought. When my mind gets quiet, or when I wake up at three in the morning. Sometimes I find themes related to my work in the late night documentary or blog post.

Work, in the deeper sense, is something that comes through me.

The work I am called to do began in notebooks, sometimes scribbled on the back of receipt paper and often written on walls.

It shows up in conversations, in hobbies and in the topics that require constant research.

Alas, the electric bill and the gas bill are not persuaded by philosophy. They still require cold hard cash.

I was making myself miserable living under the expectation that employment and vocation needed to be the same office.

So, I asked myself a more dangerous question;

What will live on through me?

Those same desires, regrets, longings and habits began to act as indicators.

The answers did not come all at once. The light began to slowly pour in through the cracks that had formed in the exterior of my life.

I considered the subjects that made me lose track of time.

I remembered what made me smile and forgave that which broke my heart.

I acknowledged what made me furious and embraced what brought me joy.

There were no pillars of fire to light my way. There were no clouds of smoke to shade my journey.

I built while no one watched.

I talked while no one listened.

I wrote words that no one read.

And I found my work hiding there.