Creativity as Vocation
Why the creative act is what you're supposed to do, but maybe not as a job. Also, don't be so hard on yourself.
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A few weeks ago, I checked in on a livestream by and of renown.
In my many years of being an introvert, I have learned to enjoy the art of ear hustling, like the magpie I am, and gleaning what I find relevant, interesting, or useful. Livestreams are a strange animal to me, since they appear less scripted than the TV group chimpanzee crap-throwing moderated news panels of channels like Fox or MSNBC, giving you the breakdown of the news like a sports play-by-play.
Livestreams are a form of voyeurism quite honestly—though all elements of the televised medium is some form of voyeurism, usually with us as passive observers of whatever conversation or spat is taking place before our eyes. Thus, when the conversation veered in a slightly more personal direction, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. We live in a time where the boundary between artist and creator has been blurred. Our lives are walking performance art for the masses that tune in to read or watch as we divulge our deepest fears, thoughts, or personal selves for an ever-hungrier audience. That’s not my overall takeaway from the conversation, but the line between private and public lives, especially for creators, blurring into nonexistence bothers me.
However, it seemed cathartic in its discussion of art and creation, on blockage, and balancing creative pursuits whilst battling a sense of imposter syndrome, wasted years when we were younger, or feeling that we’ve failed to make an impact. At least, that was what I gathered before my baby and my husband pulled my attention away and I had to duck out for a bit.1
I didn’t catch the title of the book they were discussing as the read-along for their weekly meetups, but it sparked an interesting conversation (which I won’t repeat as there were several very private thoughts that aren’t my place to gossip about) about the purpose and value of creating.
Read’s ultimate desire was to make something lasting that would touch people, whilst Scoot spoke to another common problem: he felt most vibrant in the act of creation and the works he had contributed to, while not receiving the same kind of experience in his day job. Read seemed to agree that her job was not what gave her fulfillment.
As a kid, the message that I got from television and film was that the work that one did was meant to be exciting, life-changing, go-out-and-make-a-difference-type work where one worked hard and played harder at night, from what appeared in films that came out during the 1990s through the 2010s, when I was maturing from childhood through adulthood. I missed “Office Space” until I hit my late 20s, and after working an office job, the “Dilbert” comic finally made brilliant sense.
The message many of us get when we’re young is the idea of moving up into the world into an esteemed job that pays well and allows us to live financially the kind of life we dream of. I think much of this is also defined by which social and economic class that you live in. Both of my parents were bootstrap people who either came out of extreme poverty or the working classes, and due to the unusual nature of their personalities and upbringings, had to forge a path for themselves. It didn’t really work out the way they had wanted at the end of their lives, but, that’s often what happens. Circumstances and reality subvert our expectations for where our lives go.
Most of my working experience (sports stringer, library clerk, reference librarian, program coordinator, reporter, editor, editorial assistant, freelancer, grad student, apprentice, SAHM, in that order) circled around offices and managing office politics. Many, but not all middle class, entry level or mid-management jobs, appear to cater to what we call bullshit, laptop jobs. They are not jobs that always require the most skill or brainpower, and often, from the descriptions of others, on a deep level, the people who work them know that it is a relatively easy job that sucks much of their mental and emotional energy, but they stay in it comfortably because it gives them a paycheck that allows them to live and support themselves or their family.
Modern American culture has expanded and mythologized the idea that work is the paragon of your meaningful existence. Manipulative language such as “We’re a family around here” or anything else to suggest that “we’re all in this together as a team/family” directly tells you exactly how to consider your work life. They are a replacement for what you may or may not have at home, for who you do or don’t have to love and share your life with, or go home to. Spaces in the American sphere are geared heavily toward adult communal life, but not wider, generational, sustainable life. Europe is more homogenized, through centuries of reinforcement and specific local culture that in several countries (Italy, Spain, England, Germany for example) you have some version of a communal, walkable place for multiple generations to enjoy, visit, socialize. Pub culture is heavily drinking related, sure, but there’s a different flavor in the numerous portrayals of pub life (“Waking Ned Devine” is an excellent example of this close-knit communal nature, and also a hilarious film) that isn’t present in American places, certainly not in the sam sustained way as a people that has developed over a thousand years with deeply rooted traditions compared to our 249-year old country.
There is no local pub in big suburban cities, at least where I’ve visited. Where I’ve seen something similar is in the coffee shops, bars, and restaurants, in small towns, where the community is closer, tighter, and less given to the extremes of transience for a constantly migrant adult population.
We are given these beliefs that are reinforced in the media that we consume, that work and blowing off steam afterwards for an over-priced drink is the high life.
We have forgotten that work is sometimes strictly that: a paycheck to help us survive.
It can be meaningful, depending on how you view it or what you do. But it doesn’t have to be, nor is it the only alternative to what we can find fulfilling in our lives.
From the Archive …
The secular realm doesn’t have a word that is equivalent to the concept of “vocation”, as can be found in Catholic circles. The closest one could equate it to, could be “a calling”, but this begs the nagging questions that secular humanism struggles to often answer: a calling to what, and implicitly, if a call is given, whom is giving it?
Vocation is more than a job; it’s a deep, internal inclination toward a particular skill or work that we feel indescribably drawn to do. Some are called to be healers, others a great talent toward managing people and relationships, whilst others have an aptitude for money, numbers, or mechanical genius that can fix any motor or engineer a new part. From the religious viewpoint, we receive these callings as part of how we are made in and by God. Psychology and its relevant finite reductions of the human person to a series of predictable behaviors and chemical reactions would attribute it to the random chance of inherited genes and environment. It takes the wonder and mystery of the soul and reduces it to base elements.
It is pretty true and standard, that most creatives are fairly liberal, and the perception is that there just aren’t any creative conservative or religious leaning types. This is not true, though it appears that way.
It is a combination of practicality and messaging.
As a kid, I bounced from wanting to become a fireman, Disney animator, to a doctor, to Batgirl, and finally, to being a writer and a novelist. Somewhere in there, I had entertained how fun it would be to be an actor, which my parents, being fairly aware of things like the casting couch and child sexploitation in the industry, were against me doing. They guided me to focus my creative and writing efforts into becoming a journalist.
And this is, I think, where practical, sometimes why more traditional or conservative (also Christian) parents lead their children away: working in the arts is a tricky business. It can often be dirty and have more to do with whatever “it” factor a person has, charisma charm, or the right people to be friends with, that makes or breaks an artist into a success or a failure.
This belies the fact that parents of more conservative traditional leanings, likely steer their kids toward something sustainable rather than watch their children struggle and starve as so many artists and writers have over the centuries. And that’s fair. But it also can kill that creative spark in the person because they may internalize they aren’t good enough, talented enough, creative enough, etc., to have been able to make it.
Bitterness tinges all regret with an acrid sting.
Even more so for genius unrecognized and unsung in the truly talented who wither into obscurity.
Even with enough encouragement, there is no guarantee of success, and no one has the right to go in and demand that others buy or appreciate their work and genius. In no way was that what either Read or Scoot were saying; it never made it into the conversation that I heard. But we have to assess, through our own discernment of the voices in our head, a part of the discernment of spirits as we Christians call it, what our expectations are.
What are realistic expectations?
What is realistic about ourself and our abilities and capabilities?
Are we being a fair judge, or are we being too harsh on ourselves?
How do we know that they’re realistic?
Are we comparing ourselves to someone else?
Who?
What is it we envy about them that we believe we lack in some way?
Is it true or simply perceptual?
How much does media and social media, or the amount of time we’re spending on it, impact our view of our work and our self-worth?
How do we measure our self-worth? (Validation by others, awards, medals, likes and social media engagement)
What is the impact that our imposed, chosen, or self-imposed measure, has on us?
How do we know that we are good?
How do we define “good”?
How do we define “success”?
Is it our definition, or someone else’s?
Where did that definition come from?
Do we like or dislike that definition?
Can the definition be modified? If so, how?
How would we modify it for ourself, our talents, our skills?
A few years ago, I looked up how to do impasto painting techniques, as I was curious and had an inkling that it would be helpful toward finishing a painting I had started in college and never finished. In that process, I came across a video short that explained that most creatives make the mistake of comparing themselves to the successful people all around them. The narrator explained that what we need to do as creatives is to compare ourselves to our previous selves.
They held up a piece of work they had done a few years prior, and it wasn’t terribly good; the shading was off, the lighting at the wrong angle, and it wasn’t well-drawn overall. They fast-forwarded to a year after they had started drawing and painting everyday, and it was clear that the artist had progressed.
As creatives, we have to take our skills with a small grain of salt; the same goes for our success. Some people are naturally gifted with incredible skill in language, others, can look at something and draw it perfectly without ever having really practiced. Others of us just have to keep working at the skill. But it is a skill, nonetheless.
Our creative capacities do not have to do what we do as a 9-to-5 job week in, week out. They don’t have to earn us money. Mine certainly doesn’t. Long windedly, my point is, many people, creative or not, suffer from the issue of comparison. As they say, it is the thief of joy. We compare ourselves to where we wish we could be, and sometimes get lost in appreciating that we may be right where we’re supposed to be. The modern age tells us we were supposed to have struck it rich, made it big, yesterday, and if we didn’t, by using the measure of the world, we have failed.
I spent many years thinking I was a failure because I didn’t end up becoming a famous news anchor on Fox News or some other affiliate channel, something my dad virulently pushed me toward doing. As I worked as a reporter, I found that I didn’t much care for the hours, the work, or what it would take to become a news anchor. One woman, who had transitioned to teaching media and journalism at the local high school in town, told me that one had to start in small markets, working odd hours and weekends, and it was hell on having a relationship. She was approaching 40 and expressed her own sadness at struggling to find someone and get married.
I spent the same amount of years lamenting that I was not a famous author. I was no Ray Bradbury, Wendell Berry, J.K. Rowling, Madeline L’Engle, Anne McCaffrey. I was no one but myself. And if you live in a space comparing yourself to “the greats”, with the wicked spirit of comparison and jealousy whispering constantly in that tiny, poisonous voice, you will never be great.
It is the story of the two wolves.
An old man took his grandson out one day to teach him about good and evil.
“Good and evil are like two wolves,” he said. “They live in the belly of every man.
Each day, they begin their eternal fight anew.”
“Which one wins?” the boy asked.
“The one you feed,” said the old man.
The lie we buy into is that our passion and calling should be our career. But that isn’t true. It can be for some people, and for others, it never will be. Success depends on a few things: one is connections, for sure. Another is luck. And a third is perseverance and dedication. The truth is, everyone can create, but not all pieces are going to be for a widespread, mass-marketed audience — you don’t really want that, do you?
All your work snowballs and builds on itself. Not everyone who loves Stephen King will have read or loved Anne McCaffrey or Robin McKinley. There’s probably some overlap between fans here and there. But it isn’t going to touch all people all the time, or even some of the time. Some work languishes in obscurity. Heck, the reason we have some of the “great novels” of the 20th century was due to the Armed Services Editions mailed to soldiers in WWII, who survived the war, then came back and taught them in classrooms—not necessarily because they were the most brilliant pieces of fiction. Rather makes more sense in context why “The Great Gatsby”, a nihilistic and cynical novel of the nouveau riche, appealed to the men who survived being ground up; not because it was just a phenomenal novel.2 Many authors don’t come to prominence sometimes until well after their deaths. Or they do because of government sponsored programs. I digress.
Creation as vocation should not be about the end goal of what you hope to accomplish or sell, especially if it is access to yourself. You are not a product.
Creation as vocation is about giving to the muse to satisfy the drive to make. It is not an end unto itself, as much of the content creation we see on social media drives us toward. Once upon a time, people had to wait literal damn years for an author to release a new book. In the instant gratification economy of our times, we have creators who are drowning us in cheap, easily accessible content — potato chips — that don’t necessarily satiate and fill us deeply in our souls.
I have to wonder if those people pumping out content hour-by-hour, day-by-day, feel fulfilled in the constant stressful press to feed the machine and insatiable hunger of thousands of invisible eyes. At some point they must burn out.
Creation as vocation is done because you have to get it out, or else, you will explode or repress the urge until it pours out in undesirable ways, namely, a bitterness that you’ve wasted your opportunities and your years. You haven’t. You have more years and time than you know.
Periodically I send out the same note, mostly as a reminder an encouragement to myself:
Tolkien took ten years to write The Lord of the Rings.
C.S. Lewis was 52 years old when he published “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe”.
I wish I had saved the piece I was reading earlier this week, but it discussed how when many people reach older age, they, having seen and done so much, throw up their hands and say to hell with other people’s opinions, and often have an incredible passionate output in their 60s and 70s. Most people don’t hit their stride young. That is the outlier for most creatives throughout history. Unless you’re Mozart, but most of us will never be, so don’t use “Amadeus” as your roadmap for success.
When you’re young, unless you’ve had a particularly trying life, you don’t necessarily have the life experience under your belt to really hammer in on the universals of human experience. One gathers those.
Chris Rock once talked about what work was for the creative comic. Your job, he said, isn’t getting up on the stage. Your job is gathering all the material of the things you experience during the day, the people, the jokes, the car accidents, the inanities, the guy smoking on the street corner, the tired woman fanning herself on a bench, etc., and arranging them for the stage. The stage is the fun part.
The stage is the page. It is the canvas.
The vocation is the act of creation itself, in coordination with God, the logos.
Review your expectations of yourself and where they come from. Then set yourself small goals. Eventually, they’ll build to bigger ones. And then they snowball. But do the act, the making, the creation, for the satisfaction of yourself. Chasing the high of other’s measures of validation and approval will never please you or appease them, or the audience that lives rent free in your head.
🕊️Pax Christi🕊️
🫧 🧼 Housekeeping 🧼 🫧
Hello! It’s been a while since I did one of these.
I have a life update that “may” impact IOL.
My husband and I bought a house! *Yay!* We’re moving at the beginning of July. Our apartment is an absolute mess. We live out of boxes now.
I will do my best to keep posting every week, but in the event something is skipped or comes out a few days late … you know why.
I have enjoyed doing two essays on the weeks where there is an essay, but because of the move and having a baby to look after as well, I cannot guarantee extra posts. So far no one seems upset, and I will do my best to keep trying. Without burning out of course.
Paid subscribers will get an extra story in July that is food and doomsday related that I typed up one night amidst insomnia. Consider a paid subscription to read the back catalogue of stories and essays for the price of a Guinness.
Also, my baby is learning to stand and I am constantly after them now because ALL OBJECTS ARE CONSIDERED EDIBLE NOW.
Thank you for reading! Before you go, tap that heart button to show you liked it, share, subscribe, or re-stack this piece! Every little bit helps.
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I think that was their first livestream for the read-along. This was a few weeks ago.
I hate this book. Change my mind.
Great essay. The book we are reading is called "The Artists Way" by Julia Cameron, it's a 12 week creative-recovery program modeled on AA, so there's a lot of woo-woo stuff and plenty of very personal introspection but Shaina and I thought it would be cool to do the discussion live 1) to kind of help bless with our mess, and 2) encourage others to take up the book. I know a few people who have, even being 3.5 weeks into it, I see enough fruit to encourage it. Shaina is posting the recordings on her newsletter, so while I appreciate the prudence of refraining from gossip, the practical reality is that it's all...out there.
Your list of bullet points reminded me of the japanese concept of "ikigai" which is the intersection of what you are good at, what the world needs, what you can be paid for, what you are passionate about, and maybe a few other things. It rhymes with, while not directly connecting to, the Catholic concept of vocation. I really wish I had the catholic idea of vocation as a yoot, I have wondered a lot and I have a disposition to be stressed about whether or not I can "hear" the calling. For a lot of reasons I won't get into here, I didn't start that process until I cleared a lot of the weeds from my life. In doing so, I find that vocational discernment is starting to make it's presence known. Like i had to clear a place for the helicopter to land, it was so cluttered and overgrown.
The financial pressure to make our creative passions profitable is very uniquely american i'd say. America still retains it's protestant roots (I don't know a better way to describe it, and it's no less true though I mean no intentional disrespect to any protestants who may stumble on this). The puritans believed that wealth and success follows the blessed, so that led to the protestant work ethic where people hustled to be successful and then found themselves "blessed" (but at what cost???). Likewise nowadays, the economy is so nonsensical and the world is so nonsensical that if we are struggling financially, it's almost like our knee-jerk cultural reflex is to say "you haven't tried hard enough". Which means there's not a lot of room for us to sit comfortably in our creative passions that do nothing except fulfill us spiritually and fill up our well even while we labor over our artistic endeavors.
To illustrate the point, one of my first loves is astronomy and all things space. My aunt used to ask me why I don't find a job in astronomy, and my retort to her was that "then I would need to find a new hobby". I think it's similar with creativity--everyone obviously WANTS to be financially secure from their creative work alone, but for MOST people through MOST of history, that has never been a sustainable reality. And I think most of us don't realize that we wouldn't enjoy it if it suddenly did become our sole income source.
So we come back around to contentment and detachment in our present circumstances, creating when we can create, and otherwise being content to be "poor" even if we are creatively rich. Which itself is kind of counter-cultural these days.
Congratulations on your new house, God bless!