Do you ever hear someone say something that just knocks you on your ass? It happened to me last Friday. I was listening to the radio (CBC). There was a discussion about the ongoing problem of slavery. The fellow said that it was William Wilberforce’s challenge to make people believe/understand that slavery is wrong and it is our challenge to make people believe that it still exists (apparently it’s a 39 billion/year market). Anyway, the interviewer asked how this guy did it because his work to liberate/emancipate enslaved people requires his entire devotion. He replied by saying, something like, it’s the difference between vocation and vacation. For him, it was his vocation to work towards fighting slavery in all it’s current forms. It wasn’t his 9-5 job where he saved up his time until he could go on a vacation. Vocation is sometimes connected to spirituality and the idea of a calling. However, I think it can be applied as a means of commitment, dedication and connection. And though I was sitting—I felt like I had been knocked over.

Also on Friday, Vivien and I were chatting on Skype. We were talking blogging-shop and we were both feeling frustrated, for different reasons, about the status and our approaches to blogging. We were both essentially wondering whether or not we should keep blogging. That’s not to say either of us are throwing in the towel. But to be honest with the fact that sometimes we (all) get frustrated by our success or movement or content or by the fact that CSS is freaking impossible to master by yourself (for me) and so on.

So what is blogging for me, for you—vocation or vacation? I can’t say what it is for you. And too often I have seen people tell others what it is for them or—worse—they tell others to just give up. Which reminded me of a quote from the movie The Wonder Boys (and this is a rare movie because it is much, much better than the book) that got me through a lot of doubt:

Nobody teaches a writer anything. You tell’em what you know. You tell’em to find their voice and stay with it. You tell the ones that have it to keep at it. You tell the ones that don’t have it to keep at it too because that’s the only way they’re gonna get to where they’re going.

Of course, it does help if you know where you wanna go. - The Wonder Boys

The reason that the idea of vocation or vacation knocked me back is because I lost focus and it grounded me. The reason I wanted to start Epiblogger was to bring the idea of vocation back into professional blogging (though I would never have been able to verbalize it like that before). I saw and continue to see real problems with the approaches of many professional bloggers—the disconnect between them and the readership and the quality of the content. I think I could say they were vacation-bloggers, instead of vocation-bloggers. However, I didn’t (foolishly) imagine that I could get caught up in the same patterns that must face daily. I am impervious to the temptation of money and easy-living. Here’s my confession of the day: In University I dealt with a lot of problems with severe anxiety and insomnia and on a few occasions, at 4AM, I signed up for those shows to learn how to get rich quick with real estate or whatever else (I never went, but I still get the mail-outs). I am not impervious and actually easily swayed by money.

I started to think of Epiblogger as work. I lost focus of why I was here. Epiblogger (and all my blogs) are/should be a vocational exercise. I recognize now that as I began to think of Epiblogger as work (a means for a vacation), the more negative my posts became, the more willing I was to give up on it and the less work I wanted to do. So I wrote posts that were easy, harsh and critical for all the wrong reasons. Plus, Epiblogger became a crummy vehicle to get my ultimate vacation. Because the money from the ads would get me a slurpee and (though slurpees are great) that’s no vacation. I needed to refocus. I need to ask the right questions.

I ask very specific questions in job interviews. I wonder if they seem unimportant to the interviewer. Usually, I like to ask if they have firewalls/proxies on their servers to block different websites. Do I need Facebook at work? No. Does it tell me something about how they view their employees and work? Definitely.

I want to be a vocational blogger. Not because I grew up dreaming of being a blogger or that my life revolves around it. However, I hope it is telling about who I am and who I want to be. Because I want to approach the things I do with a sense of vocation. I want to be committed, dedicated and connected not only to you and the content, but also to myself.

I submit to you, that if you want to go somewhere, you will get there faster when you have a sense of vocation.

Photo by Mohamed Abdulla Shafeeg