Thanks for reading, Veronika! Yes, I much prefer becoming, as an endless process, to that more static idea that we both seem to have inherited. Do you think it stems, in part, from that canard about finding the thing you love, so you never have to work a day in your life? The term that I've heard more recently for this is "vocational awe." If work can be seen as sacred, then it becomes "beyond critique" -- meaning, for instance, that librarians can't advocate for better pay or working conditions, because they are seen as the high priests of a sacred space. Sometimes we reinforce that sense of calling internally within a profession in ways that discourage critique. But then this adds to the trauma when we have make major life transitions.
I'm torn about this, because I did enjoy thinking of my work in this way for roughly a decade. It was very motivating to feel that I had a higher purpose, that I wasn't working merely for a salary. But then when the institution changed around me, and the mission and values expressed by the college no longer echoed with my own, that sense of calling really made it impossible for me to adapt my thinking. Some of my younger colleagues have begun protecting themselves with work boundaries, setting limits on how much they will give to their teaching, research, and service. Perhaps that is a healthier model. It still does not feel instinctive to me!
You are picking up quite a few different threads here. The notion of 'doing what you love so you don't have to work' is nonsense of course. Speaking for myself, I have 'found my calling' (or this calling found me), and I've never worked so hard in my life because I care about it so much (and it takes care of me in funny ways).
Bringing payment into the equation is a bit of a lame excuse of employees, I'd say. (having worked for a pittance on several occasion for the 'higher good of mankind')
I also have the experience of being paid well for work I thoroughly enjoyed doing (and which was my calling for a time) until some 'higher calling' came along.
My husband (also Josh, also an academic who stepped out of the system) has had similar experiences to yours.
I don't have a definitive answer either. I also don't feel that setting boundaries etc. within an unhealthy system solves the problems. (It's more of a temporary fix)
I feel we are all in a transition phase (individually and collectively) where we have to find new ground. Those of us who have received a calling may have the opportunity to establish a path for others to follow, to have the courage to step out of the system too (which ultimately doesn't serve people's needs)
Indeed -- well met! I wrote today about how I changed my major (not a calling exactly, but something like a conversion experience). For a time, the arc of that choice clearly ended well, in a faculty role. I'm still following the same instincts now.
I still remember being asked repeatedly as a child, "What will you be when you grow up?" For 3 years in high school, I was sure I would be a nurse. And then I woke up one day and knew otherwise. I was spinning. Much to my surprise and irritation, all the adults responded by saying, "that's okay, just to college and you'll figure it out there." REALLY?? After asking me for at least 14 years what I was going to do? Now it was okay to not know?
Sure enough, I went to college and fell in love with the humanities. But life intervened and my career became something else entirely.
Every time we shift, there is some grief in letting go of who we have been. As well as excitement in who we are becoming.
I think college is a fantastic place to explore like that, but it was easier for me to carry those questions through my undergraduate years in the 90s, when the cost was lower. Now there is even more pressure on students to have their lives mapped out, because they'll be accruing the equivalent of a home mortgage in debt. My idea was always that students would enjoy a broader horizon if they didn't lock themselves into predetermined outcomes. I thought this was a luxury that the wealthy enjoyed, and that real social mobility required that freedom. But a friend who works in television in NYC disabused me of that notion. The wealthy are just as eager to prescribe their children's futures, whether that be at Goldman Sachs or medicine or law. I once asked a class what their future goals were for themselves, and one young man replied, "Financial solvency." I parried with a joke about how I couldn't believe I was more idealistic than my first-year students! But to some degree he was right. As long as a college degree means going into debt for the rest of your life, real freedom will depend, sad to say, on financial solvency.
Agree. I attended college when it was dirt cheap, a Pell Grant and 3 roommates in a 2-bedroom apt. ($50 a month rent) made campus life easy. I took many classes just to check them out. I took ceramics, couldn't keep the clay on the wheel, so what, no skin off my back or money off my bank account. A lot of people were experimenting and trying things out.
Colleges have since sucked the fun out of that by ramping up tuition 10 times or more the rate of inflation, mostly to accommodate 6-figure admin salaries.
Good to hear from you after Nebraska. My partner had a similar experience, and I often feel this pull between writing, work, being a parent and being a husband. I remember my creative writing mentor for undergrad telling me that one of his students decided he wanted to have lots of time to write and became a janitor for a K-12 school and was very happy with that life. Having the time to ask what am I doing and why am I doing it is really important. Good luck, Josh!
Thanks, Tim! Great to hear from you and glad that this resonated. You might like Kevin Maguire’s The New Fatherhood. Some similar questions raised there.
My sister sent me a link to a job teaching prisoners and it's kind of tempting. My uncle was a pediatrician who later became a prison doctor. To me, teaching was more of a family business than a calling. I even had a grandmother who was a college librarian when few women even went to college. I wanted to work in lab and be like Michael Faraday. But even he gave Christmas lectures so maybe teaching bubbles up from loving your subject matter, seeing it as liberating, and wanting to share the love.
I am curious to hear more about how your center of gravity shifted when you met your first child, and subsequently with the next two. Seems like a potent file.
Thanks, Sean! A lot to say there, and maybe something I'll consider for a future post. I spent many years swearing to myself that I'd never have kids, partly out of fear that I wouldn't be a good dad. Holding my own flesh and blood removed all doubt. The question of "good" wasn't even relevant. I was responsible for another life and would be for the rest of my days. Not sure how many other fathers relate, but there is a kind of unreserved intimacy with children, especially newborns, that is missing from men's lives, or at least was missing from mine before that. I felt much the same with my second daughter. And then when we learned that we'd be having a son the third time around, it was a curious swirl of euphoria (a mini-me) and panic (knowing that my whole approach to masculinity needed careful scrutiny if I was to be a good example for a boy). Lots more to say. I like your question as a prompt for an essay!
I love the thoughtfulness you bring to being a father, and a good example. I share similar themes of wanting to feel capable, aware, and resourced enough to show up for a child, and coming from male conditioning that taught me that 'freedom' of the masculine equated to disconnection and dissociation. Lots to unpack there. Humbling to look at the pieces of that unfolding puzzle.
Anyway. The intimacy. I have a nine week old sleeping on me right now, our first. So blessed.
Good point! Why does calling have to be that single thing one was born to do?
Having followed my calling, I have come to wonder whether it really was about doing at all?
Where did I get that from?
In my experience I have been called, from one calling to another, onto a journey of becoming.
Thanks for reading, Veronika! Yes, I much prefer becoming, as an endless process, to that more static idea that we both seem to have inherited. Do you think it stems, in part, from that canard about finding the thing you love, so you never have to work a day in your life? The term that I've heard more recently for this is "vocational awe." If work can be seen as sacred, then it becomes "beyond critique" -- meaning, for instance, that librarians can't advocate for better pay or working conditions, because they are seen as the high priests of a sacred space. Sometimes we reinforce that sense of calling internally within a profession in ways that discourage critique. But then this adds to the trauma when we have make major life transitions.
I'm torn about this, because I did enjoy thinking of my work in this way for roughly a decade. It was very motivating to feel that I had a higher purpose, that I wasn't working merely for a salary. But then when the institution changed around me, and the mission and values expressed by the college no longer echoed with my own, that sense of calling really made it impossible for me to adapt my thinking. Some of my younger colleagues have begun protecting themselves with work boundaries, setting limits on how much they will give to their teaching, research, and service. Perhaps that is a healthier model. It still does not feel instinctive to me!
You are picking up quite a few different threads here. The notion of 'doing what you love so you don't have to work' is nonsense of course. Speaking for myself, I have 'found my calling' (or this calling found me), and I've never worked so hard in my life because I care about it so much (and it takes care of me in funny ways).
Bringing payment into the equation is a bit of a lame excuse of employees, I'd say. (having worked for a pittance on several occasion for the 'higher good of mankind')
I also have the experience of being paid well for work I thoroughly enjoyed doing (and which was my calling for a time) until some 'higher calling' came along.
My husband (also Josh, also an academic who stepped out of the system) has had similar experiences to yours.
I don't have a definitive answer either. I also don't feel that setting boundaries etc. within an unhealthy system solves the problems. (It's more of a temporary fix)
I feel we are all in a transition phase (individually and collectively) where we have to find new ground. Those of us who have received a calling may have the opportunity to establish a path for others to follow, to have the courage to step out of the system too (which ultimately doesn't serve people's needs)
Lovely to meet you on this path 💕🙏
Indeed -- well met! I wrote today about how I changed my major (not a calling exactly, but something like a conversion experience). For a time, the arc of that choice clearly ended well, in a faculty role. I'm still following the same instincts now.
All the best to you for your own journey!
Oh, I must look at that later.
Thank you, and very best wishes back to you
I still remember being asked repeatedly as a child, "What will you be when you grow up?" For 3 years in high school, I was sure I would be a nurse. And then I woke up one day and knew otherwise. I was spinning. Much to my surprise and irritation, all the adults responded by saying, "that's okay, just to college and you'll figure it out there." REALLY?? After asking me for at least 14 years what I was going to do? Now it was okay to not know?
Sure enough, I went to college and fell in love with the humanities. But life intervened and my career became something else entirely.
Every time we shift, there is some grief in letting go of who we have been. As well as excitement in who we are becoming.
I wrote about this recently as well, under the post "When Home is a Vocation" : https://findinghome.substack.com/p/when-home-is-a-vocation?s=w
I think college is a fantastic place to explore like that, but it was easier for me to carry those questions through my undergraduate years in the 90s, when the cost was lower. Now there is even more pressure on students to have their lives mapped out, because they'll be accruing the equivalent of a home mortgage in debt. My idea was always that students would enjoy a broader horizon if they didn't lock themselves into predetermined outcomes. I thought this was a luxury that the wealthy enjoyed, and that real social mobility required that freedom. But a friend who works in television in NYC disabused me of that notion. The wealthy are just as eager to prescribe their children's futures, whether that be at Goldman Sachs or medicine or law. I once asked a class what their future goals were for themselves, and one young man replied, "Financial solvency." I parried with a joke about how I couldn't believe I was more idealistic than my first-year students! But to some degree he was right. As long as a college degree means going into debt for the rest of your life, real freedom will depend, sad to say, on financial solvency.
Agree. I attended college when it was dirt cheap, a Pell Grant and 3 roommates in a 2-bedroom apt. ($50 a month rent) made campus life easy. I took many classes just to check them out. I took ceramics, couldn't keep the clay on the wheel, so what, no skin off my back or money off my bank account. A lot of people were experimenting and trying things out.
Colleges have since sucked the fun out of that by ramping up tuition 10 times or more the rate of inflation, mostly to accommodate 6-figure admin salaries.
Good to hear from you after Nebraska. My partner had a similar experience, and I often feel this pull between writing, work, being a parent and being a husband. I remember my creative writing mentor for undergrad telling me that one of his students decided he wanted to have lots of time to write and became a janitor for a K-12 school and was very happy with that life. Having the time to ask what am I doing and why am I doing it is really important. Good luck, Josh!
Thanks, Tim! Great to hear from you and glad that this resonated. You might like Kevin Maguire’s The New Fatherhood. Some similar questions raised there.
My sister sent me a link to a job teaching prisoners and it's kind of tempting. My uncle was a pediatrician who later became a prison doctor. To me, teaching was more of a family business than a calling. I even had a grandmother who was a college librarian when few women even went to college. I wanted to work in lab and be like Michael Faraday. But even he gave Christmas lectures so maybe teaching bubbles up from loving your subject matter, seeing it as liberating, and wanting to share the love.
I am curious to hear more about how your center of gravity shifted when you met your first child, and subsequently with the next two. Seems like a potent file.
Thanks, Sean! A lot to say there, and maybe something I'll consider for a future post. I spent many years swearing to myself that I'd never have kids, partly out of fear that I wouldn't be a good dad. Holding my own flesh and blood removed all doubt. The question of "good" wasn't even relevant. I was responsible for another life and would be for the rest of my days. Not sure how many other fathers relate, but there is a kind of unreserved intimacy with children, especially newborns, that is missing from men's lives, or at least was missing from mine before that. I felt much the same with my second daughter. And then when we learned that we'd be having a son the third time around, it was a curious swirl of euphoria (a mini-me) and panic (knowing that my whole approach to masculinity needed careful scrutiny if I was to be a good example for a boy). Lots more to say. I like your question as a prompt for an essay!
I love the thoughtfulness you bring to being a father, and a good example. I share similar themes of wanting to feel capable, aware, and resourced enough to show up for a child, and coming from male conditioning that taught me that 'freedom' of the masculine equated to disconnection and dissociation. Lots to unpack there. Humbling to look at the pieces of that unfolding puzzle.
Anyway. The intimacy. I have a nine week old sleeping on me right now, our first. So blessed.