Brief Summary
It’s easy to think that unless you are working full time in audio then you lack something in terms of achievement, competence, status or satisfaction. This article reflects on the contents of a video from a successful author who offers useful advice and perspective on four related but different words we might use to describe our relationship with work.
Going Deeper
My partner is a visual artist. Creatives share many similarities but that isn’t to say that all creative pursuits are the same and for all the difficulties of being an audio professional or a musician, I still look to visual artists with a degree of “ouch.. Tough gig!”. It’s not a competition on who has the worst job but it’s a pretty relentless grind for the visual artists out there.
Along with the excitement of a big sale or commission, which do happen, there can often be days of soul searching and wondering whether its worth it. She found this video online and when she showed it to me I thought there was a clear relevance to people who work, or aspire to work, in pro audio.
Elizabeth Gilbert is a successful author, best known for writing the book which became the film Eat, Pray, Love which featured Julia Roberts. Her thoughts apply to any creative industry but the message resonated with me drawing as it does a useful distinction between these four words which often get confused with each other but, while they overlap to some degree, are different:
Hobby. Job. Career. Vocation.
The word “Professional” has always presented an issue for people working in Pro Audio. For a start what is that “Pro” at the front of “Pro Audio” actually communicating? Is it a standard or an employment status? We’ve wrestled with this in the past, for example in Russ’ article What Separates A Creative Professional From An Enthusiast?
Having watched Elizabeth Gilbert’s video, which I’ll admit I didn’t expect to get much from before I watched it, I think the distinctions she draws are extremely useful and if taken on board are rather liberating. On the blog we are always aware of the implied value judgement of ‘Enthusiast’- It always suggests someone who is annoyingly eager to me. Like it or not ‘Amateur’ implies a lack of competence and Gilbert’s use of ‘Hobby’ for me is even worse. We’ll just have to accept that the best word to describe someone who engages in a pursuit for its own sake without an accompanying value judgement hasn’t yet been coined.
So in the video Gilbert draws a distinction between a hobby, a job, a career and a vocation. I’ve thought a lot about the difference between amateur/enthusiast and professional in the past but the further subdivisions she draws between job career and vocation are useful, particularly for those who feel a dissonance between what they do for a living and what they feel they ought to be doing for a living.
Hobby
Doing some thing for its own sake, if it weren’t for its pejorative connotation I’d prefer amateur, coming as it does from the French word for love. To do something for love rather than money is after all a noble motivation. However Gilbert’s use of hobby is useful in that it communicates the freedom of a hobby. It’s nobody else’s business but your own. You conduct yourself on your own terms and if they happen to interface with professionals then great but, if you are pursuing a hobby, you are in charge. That’s a luxury few professionals enjoy.
Job
What you do for money. This is helpful whether your job is in audio or not as it defines responsibility. The all too common experience of the thing you do for money not being the thing you might choose is actually pretty normal and is often just a stage on a larger journey. The upside of this is that a bad job is just a bad job, there are other jobs so if you don’t like the job you can find another. It’s only a job. I’ve met, and worked with plenty of people who work in audio but clearly see it as their ‘job’ and if they ever loved it don’t any more. The crew of some regional theatres I’ve toured spring to mind…
Career
The mission, something you’re prepared to make sacrifices for. While the art of massaging people’s pasts into a coherent journey from school all the way to one’s previous position on a resume is highly developed, most people who have a significant work history probably know perfectly well that it conceals a few blind alleys, especially at the beginning. However, unlike a job, if find you dislike your career then that’s much more profound. You can just go a get another job, a career is more complicated.
Vocation
A calling. This one is the hardest to define but we hear it all the time. People have jobs which can be arbitrary, people have careers which however rewarding aren’t something you might ever think defines them. My brother is a Project Manager. On paper he’s more successful than me but even he can’t explain what he actually does. It’s certainly not his vocation. The Creative industries are full of people who don’t feel like they have an alternative other than to do what they do. It is their vocation. This is both a good and a bad thing as, while it drives people to achieve, it can also drive down its value. How many musicians do you know who will play for nothing, or nearly nothing? The same can apply to engineers who work for less than their time is worth, or longer than the budget justifies because they care about their chosen pursuit, it is after all their vocation…
The reason I was inspired to write about this video is that communicates clearly a useful distinction between the things which drive us to do what we do. Have you considered the relationship between your job, career and vocation before, or for you is audio a hobby?
Photo by Brett Sayles