Career != Hobby != Calling

[jducoeur]

Thanks to mindways for the link to this fine little essay, about the fact that modern society, too often, separates activities too neatly into the buckets of "career" and "hobby", missing the fact that there are vocations that don't necessarily match either well.

This point comes quite personally to me right at the moment. Indeed, it's been the main focus of the negotiations over my new job -- I think they've been a bit puzzled over my demand for a four-day week. The CEO even said, when I was interviewing with him, "Never confuse your career with your hobbies". And that's true, but kind of misses the point.

For me, the CommYou project has become something of a calling. I've been forced to recognize that it's not necessarily a career: while I might someday make money off of it, I can't count on that. But it's by no means a "hobby", either -- there's a connotation of casualness about "hobby" that doesn't fit here. While the damned project is moving far, far slower than I'd like, it is something I *have* to do, just as much as a writer must write or a painter must paint.

Hence the four-day work week. If I tried to put CommYou purely on the back burner, I'd never be able to do a real day job: it would consume and frustrate me. So instead, I'm employing my long-practiced skill at separating the parts of my life: I can keep CommYou in a box if and only if there is a decent-sized box to put it into. Four days a week belong to the job that pays real money; one goes to the calling. I suspect it's actually going to work better than the consulting gig did -- by having clearer lines of what time belongs to whom (as well as physical separation of *where* I do each, and on what computers), I should be able to *focus* on both better than I've been doing, which will help me really get going on CommYou 2.0...

Comments

[siderea]

Thank to the pointer to that essay. It's perfectly true, but -- and this is no fault -- it is not complete. There's a fourth category, that lacks a name. It's the category of important and fulfilling things we do that aren't callings. Calling is when one particular activity has its own special insistence in your life -- "you can't take the collar off" as one commentor put it. But pretty much everyone on your flist has things they do to fulfill themselves "spiritually" -- from volunteering in their religious congregation to going dancing -- which aren't their hobbies, callings, or jobs.

Changing the topic: I would propose that CommYou isn't your calling, it being one specific project; that your calling is somthing bigger and more abstract, of which CommYou is the present manifestation/project. Most artists would not call a single work of art their calling, but being an artist. Note that "calling" is used to describe roles/jobs, e.g. "artist", "author", "clergy", and not products, e.g. "Untitled #1", "The Great American Novel", "the worlds best sermon".

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

wispfox sent that to me -- she's a big fan of haikujaguar -- and it rang very true. For me, the vocation seems to be storytelling, in a number of media, and everything else is a way to keep other parts of my brain and pocketbook satisfied...

I'm glad to hear you are finding a way to make both work and calling fit together.

[roozle.livejournal.com]

Oh this is so well timed for me to read. Someone described my artwork as a "hobby" recently, and I bristled, and yet ... I have to admit that I certainly never expect to support myself with it. So what AM I doing? The spiritual overtones of "vocation" don't sit perfectly, but it's closer to how I feel about how this is the work that sustains me.

[laurion]

Your plan reminds me of Google's (apparently now gone) 20% plan, whereby workers were encouraged to spend 20% of their time on things they thought interesting and challenging and worth their attention. Some of Google's biggest successes have come from that, including Gmail.