When you don’t have a “calling”

How to find your work, when it’s not obvious [Don’t Work: Part 10]

Oct 13, 2024

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Series: Don’t Work | Part: 10 of 10 | Reading Time: 8 mins
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This is part of the series, Don’t Work, exploring our identity and meaning around work. Subscribe to get the next part in the series.

“You know some people have jobs, some people have careers. […] Now the people in the audience with careers need to learn to shut the fuck up when you’re around people with jobs. They don't want to hear your career bullshit. Keep that shit to yourself, okay?” - Chris Rock (the whole bit is great, btw)

I’ve never had the gift of an obvious calling.

Something that smacked me in the back of the head telling me what exactly to do. I’ve certainly always wanted one. For some time, I thought I had one (more on that later). And I’ve felt envious of others that seem to have such clarity.

So if you grew up always knowing you wanted to be a Doctor or a Teacher, or a Social Media Marketer for B2B Accounting Software – good for you!

But if you aren’t so lucky, I feel for you. It can be exceedingly frustrating to not have an answer, but believe, out there, other people do.

In my Don’t Work series, I’ve argued that disconnecting, via a mid-career break, was an essential step for me to reconnect with myself and what matters. Now, it’s time to talk about how I found my way back… without any bright flashing lights or signs directing me this way or that.

I. Soulmate Stalemate

"If you find work you love you’ll never have to work a day in your life… because they aren’t hiring." - Unknown

I wonder which word has done more harm to their respective realms: the idea of a “soulmate” or a “calling?”

In each, we fall for these romantic fantasies. The seductive belief that there is this One Thing waiting out there for us. If we could only find it! Our life, without it, will feel like something is missing, until automagically all our emotional needs are today-and-forever met by this perfect partnership.1

But why are you destined to have “a calling?” Especially one that pays?

Did cavemen have callings? What if one of them had a calling for making YouTube videos?2 Sorry Oogie-Boogie, wrong millennium!

The truth is that the market doesn’t give a damn about your calling. You’re deluding yourself if you believe the system is organized around helping you find your perfect work.

And circumstances may preclude you from ever accessing one. Or, as many Doctors and Teachers realize, those early signs of a calling are really curses wrapped in disguise, as the world seems intent on impeding you from living out your dream.

Reality check: you are not here to fulfill some prophecy. You are not The One. This is not Harry Potter. Or, if it is, you are definitely not one of the main characters.

While our brains have a need to create coherence through a grand narrative that injects meaning into our lives, the real world guarantees us no such salvation.

It’s another irresistible idea that life, like our career, is simple and straightforward. And despite our confusing reality, there is some other parallel, out of reach universe where it is much more clear.

But I’m right there with you. I used to think I had a calling too…

II. Birth and Death of a Calling

"That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it." - George Carlin

I thought that “building startups” was my thing. While I was undergoing some early existential angst, I stumbled on an opportunity that allowed me to find myself in my work. I loved the challenge. I loved turning an idea into reality. I had an opportunity to become the idols I dreamed about. It was a perfect fit.

And it worked for me, for a while.

But then, at some point, the calling stopped calling me back. It was like being ghosted in a relationship... Wait, I thought we had something going here? Was it you? Was it me? Can I just get some closure here?!?

I had assumed, naively, that my “calling” was a permanent, singular relationship. One and done.

I believed I was like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos or whatever modern demigod whose “calling” just so happened to be a perfectly timed and aligned market opportunity.

But things changed. I fell out of a calling.

Meanwhile, fast forward to today, there are virtually zero signs from my past telling me that I should start writing.

I didn’t like writing as a kid. I didn’t write on the side after a long days work. The most I ever did was take a lot of notes.

I’m not even sure you could call writing a “calling” for me. It’s just something I really like doing, right now. But how will I feel in one year? Five years?3

And while we’re on it, remember that caveman from before? Consider that writing didn’t even exist for over 98% of Homo Sapiens history, let alone be accessible by the masses until recently.

Some will argue that a calling is much more abstract than what I'm talking about (e.g. writing or being a YouTuber). Which may be true, but also amplifies my point that callings are hard to put your finger on. And the obvious, limited-menu options handed to us aren’t enough.

Seeing the precarious and impermanent nature of finding the right work, I’ve decided to blow up the idea of callings altogether and take a new approach.

III. The Right Work is Continually Made

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” - Milton Berle

Anyone who has fallen in love and sustained it over the long-term, knows that great relationships are not just found. They are continually made.

The relationship must be nurtured through effort, choices, and trade-offs… over-and-over again, over a loooooong time. There’s nothing straightforward about it.

Plus, to even fall in love in the first place, you need at least a dozen other things to work out. The timing needs to be right. You need the other person to like you back. You need to agree on the right temperature for the thermostat - because 1 degree can be the difference between life or death.

Similarly, your work is not just found. It’s continually made.

The idea that you find your destiny and now are done… is a mirage.

Just as we constantly evolve in our relationships, learning to grow and adapt, so too must we approach our work with that same openness to change.

Life must be continually iterated upon, trying new ideas and options, at the core and edges. And it’s hard to know whether the next iteration will ever be the right fit. We just need to keep going, trying over-and-over again.

And like the soulmate delusion, it’s not just about finding someone else. It requires you to find yourself, as well, and then continually make yourself anew. An interplay between molding something to ourselves and molding ourselves to something.

I keep harping on this point throughout this series: careers are not fixed things. They are fluid. They flow with the seasons of your life, go up and down and around.

Instead of searching for a singular calling, maybe your work is more like a portfolio. Or maybe your work comes in series, where you do one thing for a while, then another, then another, and so on. Or maybe your work will emerge over time, as you better understand yourself.

Or maybe work, as we traditionally think about it, is only a means to another end. And it’s in that other place where you find your calling.

My own experience is that work can provide a great deal of satisfaction, community, structure and purpose. But that’s different from being a destiny, calling, or gateway to heaven.

IV. How to Make Your Work

“This is something I can’t not do, for reasons I’m unable to explain to anyone else and don’t fully understand myself, but that are nonetheless compelling.” - Parker Palmer

So how do you go about continually making your work? Based on my experience, here are some ways to think about it:

Search outside of work 😱. Yeah, I said it! If you’re like me, you’ve been searching in the wrong place. I don’t blame you - you spend a lot of time at work and see other people seemingly having such a better time. But you may be trying to force it. Instead, there are much more obvious answers outside of work than inside of it, such as family, community, and causes. Start there to find sources of meaning and train yourself to distinguish what matters vs. not. And maybe you can build it back into work later, if you’re lucky.
Create more space. Someone recently asked me: “Could you have done it without a sabbatical?” I won’t rehash the whole series here, but it’s a fundamentally important point: I had to distance myself from the outside world, in order to regain better contact with myself. I was in too deep - too wrapped up in the tide to realize the tide was pulling me along.
Interests > Calling. Don’t fall under the weight of a calling, which may distract away from the obvious stuff right in front of you. What topics or activities are you naturally drawn to? I tried forcing myself to continue liking healthcare (with its inherently altruistic features), when I had more of an innate pull toward bigger questions around work and meaning (hence, The Way of Work).
Doing > Being. One sign you’re in the wrong work is that you enjoy the being more than the doing. You like being a lawyer, but not doing the lawyering. It’s usually because of some status you gain from the being part. But it’s a soul-sucking place to live, day-after-day. Instead, pay attention to the work you enjoy doing, regardless of the being. What work brings you into flow states? For me, I just like writing and want to keep doing it, despite it being lower status than my prior life.
People > Problems. It can help to have in mind specific people you want to help, rather than focus on an abstract problem that needs solving. I got lost in the layers of scale, disconnected away from the people I impacted. So it’s useful to think: who do I want to help the most?
Stop consuming so much. First, thank you for reading my newsletter. You should keep consuming this one. But you’re probably filling your head with too much stuff from out there. I get it, you’re trying to gather information to be better informed (I do it too). But over time, you gain the skill of listening to others, while losing the skill of listening to yourself.
Experiment with alternative lives. The book, Designing Your Life, lays out a useful activity called “Odyssey Plans” (which I used) where you project multiple potential futures, from realistic to bold. For myself, I considered about 15 different options for what to do next.
Get rich, then find a calling. What? Were you hoping for something more inspirational?

I get it. This isn’t the most uplifting take about finding your work.

Honestly, I hope you find something like a calling.4 But you’re smart enough to know it won’t just show up gift-wrapped at your door. Or that you’re guaranteed one at all. Instead, it’s something you have to curate, cultivate, and even create, piece by piece, over time.

There’s no magic, it’s a process. And in that process, you might just create something meaningful. Even without all the delusions of dreams and destiny.

And there we go. End of series. But don’t worry… there’s a new series in the works, called The Other Side of Enough, exploring the lives of people who have enough to never work again. Stay tuned. I don’t think you’ll want to miss it.