Quite often when I’m coaching someone it becomes apparent that they have come to detest their job, yet they still have intense interests within their personal life, which seem to be quite disconnected from what they do at work.So is it surprising that the creativity stops flowing so freely in the hours for which they are paid? Yet they can remain highly innovative away from their work desk.
This was the situation for me for many years, even though in my case the two worlds are not so far apart. I would bring my best endeavours to my day job, but reserve the passion for research and writing about music and art and literature.
The American poet, Robert Frost, captured the issue neatly in his poem “Two Tramps in Mud Time”. These are the final lines:
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes.
How close are your vocation and your avocation? Would you benefit from drawing them closer together?
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