Hugh Hollowell

Creating a compelling vision of a better world.

The difference between your job and your calling

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I don’t understand why it happens, but it does.

People ask me for career advice. All the time. Even people who make a lot more money than I do. Especially, it seems, people who make a lot more money than I do.

Which, I think, is why they are drawn to me. I am obviously not making a lot of money, yet seem to like my job and career, despite it being very hard. So several times a month, I am sitting across the table at a coffee shop, talking to someone about vocation. Their future. What they want to be when they grow up.

They tell me about their dreams of changing the world. How they don’t feel they are being useful in their current situation. How they just go through the motions, and feel like they are committing suicide on the installment plan.

Or they are still in college or grad school, and the job offers they are getting don’t look like what they envisioned when they picked this major, and they don’t want to give up their dreams.

So they read something I wrote, or I speak at their church or college or a friend recommends they call me, and we end up in that coffee shop. It turns out,  I know a little bit about deciding to change.

I listen to them. I’m good at listening. I hear their stories, their desires, their aches. I hear their frustrations and fears. I hear them give voice to the desire to change the world, while also having to pay bills and feed their families. I listen to all of that.

And then I tell them: You need to find a job, a calling and a passion. 

First, some definitions:

A job is something you do for which you get money in return. The sole purpose of a job is to pay your bills. You may derive other benefits from a job, but that just means you are lucky.

A calling is what you feel moved to do in the world. Your concern for homelessness, or inner-city children, or the urban family, or native plants or ecological restoration. A calling is, to paraphrase Buechner, the intersection of your yearning and the world’s need.

A passion, for our purposes, is something not related to the first two things that fills you, that moves you, that you can work on to replenish your emptiness and that you look forward to. Maybe it’s painting, or kayaking, or running, or stamp collecting. Whatever. It should be something you can lose yourself in that brings you happiness.

Sitting in that coffee shop, I tell them about getting a job, a calling and a passion. I tell them that their unhappiness comes from wanting to get all three of those things from the same place. That rarely happens. In fact, I argue, it probably shouldn’t happen.

I am one of the fortunate folks that, at this exact point in time, I have a job that intersects my calling. But that is very rare – both in the world and in my life. For most of the last nine years I have been doing this work, I have had at least one other job to help pay the bills.

I worked as a freelance writer. I sat at the desk overnight at a 24 hour gym. I sold hot dogs outside a gay bar and across the street from a hardcore porn video shop. I built websites. I speak to groups. All of those were jobs. The only thing I asked from them was that they provide income.

Meanwhile, I have worked tirelessly to build communities where people who were experiencing homelessness could be welcomed, loved and engaged. Places where the stranger could enter and become a friend, where people could just be, where people who were very different from each other could sit across from each other and see those differences become less important.  That is my calling. It is what I feel like I was born to do, and I am really good at it, and it is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

It also pays for crap.

When I am not doing either of those two things, I am either reading or working in my garden. Both of those things are things that replenish me, that I derive great joy from, that I look forward to. They are more than hobbies, they are passions. 

Or, to use another example, I have a friend who is an associate pastor for a huge church in the deep south, where one of her duties is to be in charge of the high school ministry. That is her job – it pays her bills. She has devoted her life to helping teenagers connect with each other, God and their communities. That is her calling – what she feels she was meant to do in the world. And she runs marathons. That is her passion – it keeps her motivated and feeling alive.

Breaking it down to those three categories has several immediate benefits.

  • It takes a lot of pressure off of you to find that perfect job. Just go make some money, yo.
  • It gives you time to flesh out your calling and to find your passion. I was 35 before I figured out what my calling even was.
  • It increases the odds you can do your calling for a lifetime. People in full-time callings burn out at super-high rates. If you burn out, the world isn’t going to get better. It needs to get better.
  • You may, like my friend above, find a job that allows you to focus on your calling. But if you don’t, it isn’t the end of the world.
  • Jobs change. Your identity probably shouldn’t be tied up in your job. Better it be tied up in your calling.
  • By accepting that your passion is a support system for your life, it makes you feel less guilty about losing yourself in it.

If you ask me to coffee because you have vocation concerns, that is what I am going to tell you. Get a job, a calling and a passion.

But you can still ask me out for coffee. Especially if you are paying for it.

Nobody has a right to all of you.

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no shopping!
I recently changed the way I use Facebook. I deleted my personal account that had several thousand “friends”- most of whom I never knew in real life – and started over, this time only friending people I knew, liked and had spent time with.

I also made the decision to not friend people I like, but who primarily use social media for work announcements – I will use other ways to stay in touch with them.

My friends list went from nearly 3,000 to less than 300, and is much more manageable. Most people have been understanding.

But not everyone.

Someone unsubscribed from my newsletter the other day. When you unsubscribe, you are given the option to say why. Here is what he wrote in the box:

I had thought that we were friends until your Facebook friending showed that you do not reciprocate. I wish you well.

So many layers in just 21 words.

I could spend hours talking about the ways in which Social Media deludes us into the appearance of connection without the reality of it.

But the bigger point I want to make is this:

Nobody has a right to all of you.

I share a lot of my life and thoughts on Social Media. I have an Instagram account, open to the public. I have a Twitter feed, open to the public. I have a professional Facebook page, open to the public. I have a newsletter that goes out every week where I share very personal things.

All of that is open to him, but because he did not have access to this one part of my life I choose to reserve for people I am in actual relationship with, he got mad.

Nope, nope, nope.

You have a right to boundaries, a right to decide how much of you is available, to decide how much of your life, your time, your story, your pictures, your memories you wish to put out into the world. You get to decide how much of your life you want to share with people, and you get to decide that on a person by person and event by event, basis.

And if people do not understand that or respect that, then you get to decide they should not be in your life at all.

The Day I Did Not Die

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Content warning: Descriptive narrative of a suicide attempt. Please take care of yourself.

Chris Cornell is dead. They are reporting he killed himself.

I have a confession: I am not sure I know his music, or his band, or anything about him. I am pretty sure I never heard his name before today.

And none of that matters. Because it is being reported that he hung himself, and according to my Facebook feed, most of my friends were his fans, and so that news is everywhere. And every time a high-profile suicide happens, all the old fears come back, even if only to remind myself that they are never far away.

It is a common story, and I am not claiming to be special. I was a smarter than average kid who looked differently than his classmates – I was scrawny, pimply, socially awkward and most of all, afraid. I was always afraid. These days you would say I was bullied. In those days, I would have said I was in hell.

I was 16 years old, and my parents were not home. I don’t know how to describe it – it was just a wave that came over me, and when it did, I was ready.

I had read countless accounts of suicide – no mean feat in that pre-internet age. I had read all the dictionary entries, all the encyclopedia accounts. Then I researched famous suicides – Socrates, Hemingway, anyone at all who had made their way into the Britannica. I had a morbid fascination with death, and with suicide.

So when the dark wave came, I was ready.

I had received a shotgun for Christmas when I was 14. There were strict rules around its use, but it was unlocked. I sat on my bed and loaded it with buckshot. I took off my shoes, because I had figured out I could pull the trigger with my toe – a “trick” I had learned in a book I read about famous deaths. I put the barrel in my mouth – right now I can taste the bitter, acrid taste of the oil and the metal on my tongue – and placed my toe on the trigger.

And then I took the barrel out of my mouth, unloaded the gun and put it away. I don’t know why. The darkness receded, just like it came. I was horrified to find myself there. And it would be more than 10 years before I would tell anyone that it had happened.

It wasn’t the last time I thought about self-harm, however. Maybe three times since then, I have been in that same vicinity. The darkness just comes on sometimes, and it seems an incredibly rational solution to end the pain. It is always late at night (more accurately early morning). I hate waking up at 3 or 4am – not because I am afraid I won’t go back to sleep, but because I am afraid of where my brain will take me if I stay awake.

Please don’t mishear me – I have a good support structure in place. I have people who know my history, who love me, who I feel safe calling should I need them. There is a list of people Renee knows to call if I scare her with my moods. Mentally, I am in pretty good shape these days.

And I figure, from everything I read, that Chris Cornell had it pretty good, too. It is obvious he was talented. He had a family that loved him, he had kids. He had extremely devoted fans. He had a lot going for him. I bet that brother had health insurance.

And that is why, when I read of the high-profile suicides, it scares me a little bit. Because it reminds me that the wave is never really gone, even if it has been quiet for a really, really long time.

If you feel like hurting yourself, please don’t. The National Suicide Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. And if you don’t want to call them, please call someone.