What If Your Calling Doesn’t Make You Happy?
What If Your Calling Doesn’t Make You Happy?
Financial independence is fantastic. It allows you to wrangle free from the hum-drum existence of the W2 asset class and aspire towards your individual life calling. Maybe you want to start a non-for-profit. Or volunteer at a local hospital. Or travel to the Galapagos islands and study the unique evolution of the flora and fauna. Whatever your passions may be, there is no greater accelerator than freeing up forty or so extra hours a week to pursue them. But what if your calling doesn’t make you happy?
What if the one thing that tugs at your brain, wakes you up in the middle of the night with your heart pumping, induces a seething cauldron of emotions that are not always positive? Believe it or not, many of us have a little more complicated relationship with our hopes and dreams.
Once money is not an issue anymore, should we follow our passions?
On Doctoring
I have wanted to be a doctor as long as I can remember. Some of my first memories involve looking longingly at my father as he left for work in his gray laboratory coat with his stethoscope bouncing back and forth in his pocket. That vision stayed with me long after his death. It became the image by which I fashioned my own version of adulthood.
Like the dutiful child, I followed in his footsteps traversing medical school and residency unperturbed by a range of obstacles.
And I liked my job. I relished the opportunity to meet my patient’s problems head on. I thrived on making each new diagnosis, starting every new treatment plan. But I was not my father. Years after his death, I searched through his medical papers and found a trove of lectures and notes. Partially stenciled graphs and long forgotten hypotheses.
The love was evident with each smudge of the pencil tip. These were the remnants of a man who had discovered his calling.
Deep down my heart quailed. Medicine was my profession. It was that which engaged many of my wakeful hours. But my calling? My true calling was something else completely different. Hidden under a barrage of intentionally placed emotional refuse sat the most frightening and unpalatable of truths.
Not only had medicine become the great impostor, my true passion often brought nothing but heartbreak.
But what do you do when your calling doesn’t make you happy?
I Was Meant To Write
With every bone in my body. With every word from my mouth. My mind a conduit transferring ephemera from electrical errata to pencil and paper. It’s the first thought upon awaking and the last taste of consciousness before drifting into oblivion.
I have no deeper meaning or purpose (excluding children, family, friends, etc). No interest in studying or researching or obtaining advanced degrees. I want to lock myself in a room, turn my computer on, and type.
And it makes me crazy. Driven by the curse of unwritten words, my mind can’t rest until my thoughts are vomited onto paper. It’s a compulsion. A maddening compulsion.
Writing is painful. And tumultuous. Translating thought and feeling into a jumbled clump of letters, I often get it wrong. The words fail. The feelings too difficult to convey.
Ecstasy and enmity.
Joy and Pain.
Balance
I write. I write a lot. On this blog. On another blog. But I couldn’t write all day. I would lose my grip on sanity.
So most of the time I’m a doctor. I don’t see this going away anytime soon. It brings a certain feeling of balance that is deeply necessary.
In what might be the greatest bit of ironic realization since reaching financial independence,
I do better with just a little less freedom.
Oh that last line really gets to me. I suspect it can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Your medical life, art business, and financial experience have all given you great stories. Stories you can write about and we are lucky enough to read. Just remember when you lock that door, it is you that holds that key.
Very true. Once I’m in there for awhile. I hope I can find it!
I get that entirely, I was a great engineer and loved designing things and troubleshooting operating problems and because I was adept at it I was promoted all the way to the top where I spent all my time managing people and not designing or troubleshooting very much at all. I had to retire a little early to get back to side gigs that are more aligned with my sweet spot.
It sounds like you did it just right.
So thaaaaat’s how you put a post out every day. You’re obsessed 😉
I struggle with the thought of a “calling”. I think a person’s calling can change over time. Passions can for sure. But most people consider a calling to be “the one thing” that’s at the core of a person. But I think it can be fungible and dynamic for many people.
I think writing and medicine qualify for me. They have always been a core to who I am.
Hey Doc G!
I think the old saying goes, “do what makes you happy…even if you didn’t get paid for it.” And yes, for me writing is my happy time too!
In college, I went into majors that I realized only challenged me. Because I spent so much time studying for them (Chemistry, Biology, Health Sciences), I went in that direction. Instead of what came easier…Writing, English, Theater, etc.
During my MBA program, we had an Entrepreneurship class. We had to create a business plan, etc. and turn in progress updates to the Professor. Every time I turned in my update, he’d hand it right back, “Nope, this isn’t you. Try again.” I was submitting things like Architect, Landscape Designer, whatever. Finally, I turned in Writer. He accepted it and said, “You finally found it!”
P.S. Do you know how hard it was to create a business plan for a writer? Lawdy. I should pull that out again, and try and see how far off the course I am from it! haha.
Yah. It’s hard to make a business plan out of writing. I guess we’re stuck blogging.
Nice piece of writing.
However, I object to a few assumptions you seem to be making/promoting:
# 1 That one can only have one passion
# 2 That all passions must be equally strong
# 3 That a passion(s) is static throughout life
I would argue none of those are true. I know there are times in my life when I felt MUCH more passionate about medicine and writing and climbing and a dozen other things than I do right this instant. However, I discovered relatively early in my career that there is pretty much nothing I’m interested in doing more than 20 hours a week. It’s not laziness. I’m more than willing to work 60 or even 80 hours a week. But not at the same thing (and not every week.) At any rate, I’ve found the opportunity to get to pursue two of my passions- medicine and writing- and even better get paid well to do both of them.
One advantage you have over a lot of people who are passionate about writing is that you’ll never have to be the “starving writer” thanks to your career decision. If nothing else, you took Jonathan Clement’s advice to “get a job in your 20s/30s that pays well and sock the money.” That allows you to chase passions now rather than worry about meeting the bills. That’s actually a very first world problem. When your biggest complaint about your job is “I’m not self-actualizing enough” you’ve clearly already won the game/lottery in life. Most of those who have ever dwelt on this sphere never got past the point of keeping their belly full enough to worry about their passions.
Your points are well taken. One thing that I struggle with is that I have this incredible drive to write even if it is not always “gratifying”.
There is no question, being a doctor has allowed this first world problem and I am deeply grateful.
My main point is to challenge this idea that the meaning of life is to follow our calling. Sometimes that calling can also be dark and difficult.
This problem is faced by about 1/3 of all doctors today. It prompted me to write “The Doctors Guide to Smart Career Alternatives and Retirement.” For all the doctors who need a change, this could open you eyes to a whole new world of posibilities. We all have options, even doctors. Do something you love.
Hey Cory. I can’t wait to read your latest. Thanks for being the voice of clarity for us struggling Docs!