Avocation
I noticed recently that the average 30-day open rate for editions of Field Notes & Reflections hovers around 50%. I cannot tell whether it is the same 50% of subscribers who always open the email or check in with the Substack app, but that seems doubtful. In many cases, I suspect, the notification of a new essay gets lost among the many emails and texts that busy people receive and find difficult to control. In other cases, it is more trouble to unsubscribe than its worth. In still others, the recipient truly intends to look at it sometime but never gets around to it.
I am not bothered by the fact that what I write is ignored by half my potential audience. I do not make a point to check regularly the 30-day open rate statistic. It appears in a prominent place on the dashboard, but I am usually moving quickly to some other portion of the site. The open rate rarely grabs my attention.
There is a simple explanation for this: I am my own primary audience. I do not write these essays for the purpose of generating income. If I did, I would be more aggressive in promoting them than I am, and would be more motivated to assess the success of those efforts to gain readers.
If I am being completely honest, however, when I began writing Field Notes three-and-one-half years ago, I was in the early stages of creating a consulting career. I did not know what that business would look like over the long term. I thought it possible that prospective clients would stumble upon my business through these publications. That has not happened, at least not that I am aware.
Even in those early days, my principal interest was in the thinking and writing. When I left full-time city management, I knew that this was a way I wanted to spend a portion of my time. It was, and is, an avocation I chose to pursue.
Vocation and avocation are similar but distinct terms. The former is used to name the category of endeavors intended to generate income one needs to purchase life's necessities. Avocations, in contrast, are hobbies and pastimes. They are pursued for the intrinsic pleasure of doing them.
There are those who advocate turning an avocation into a vocation as a side-gig, a way to supplement income from a full-time job. The thought has crossed my mind on occasion that I could do this, although not with writing. I quickly realized, however, that this is probably a good way to ruin the fun of having a hobby.
Instead, it makes more sense to turn a vocation into an avocation, or, as Robert Frost put it in Two Tramps in Mud Time, to combine the two:
But yield who will to their separation,
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.
When we talk about work-life balance, we are tempting ourselves to step into the trap of segregating parts of our lives, an impossible task. We should not seek to reallocate the time we devote to work and leisure in order to better achieve personal fulfillment and pleasure. We should instead look for ways in which the values we associate with avocations can be discovered in our vocations.
As I have stated in earlier essays, I like work. It is a source of challenges and psychic rewards for me. When I am not working for pay, I still devote many hours to a volunteer position. I would not find contentment in too much idleness.
How does one learn to love work? Sometimes one takes pride in an accomplishment or in the way in which an undertaking benefits one's fellows. On other occasions, the joy is in the process itself, the opportunity to apply knowledge and skill to a problem, whether solved or not. One might also realize that work builds character, providing occasions to practice virtues that will serve one throughout each day and for the years one lives.
There is a tendency at times, when we are chatting idly with friends, to emphasize the negative aspects of the work we do. We seldom face the fact that leisure pursuits are not always pleasurable either. Golf is frustrating for some players, but they continue to show up regularly on the course. There are days when the fish are not biting, but we keep at it.
If one's vocation is such that it cannot be joined with an avocation, perhaps one is not doing it right. Identify what brings joy when pursuing a hobby and look for the same things at the office.