What is the difference you can't stop making?

About ten years into my career as a full-time professional musician, I decided I'd had enough. Playing out 300 days a year, crappy meals, crappier lodging, cranky bandmates, fickle audiences, and slippery venue owners had me feeling burned out and over it.

I announced my decision to quit music and get a real job to my wife as I slid my guitar cases under the bed. Her response? "You'll be back on stage somewhere in two weeks or less."

A week later, I was back on the phone, booking gigs and back on stage. Turns out my wife was right. All I needed was a vocation vacation.

By definition, vocation is the work you're called to do. In my experience, it's the work you can't stop doing.

But there's a fine line separating vocation from obsession. I'm grateful for having the sense to pause and reflect. I was refreshed, recommitted, and ready to level up my career when I returned to music-making.

I took another vocation vacation later in my music career, which ended up helping me find a new calling. Actually, it was a return to my original vocation of teaching. I opened a guitar studio. For more than fifteen years, I launched and guided hundreds of music-making adventures.

Recently, another vocation vacation led me to retire from music performance and teaching and move into writing and coaching. Vocation vacations are funny things and can lead to surprising and delightful new adventures.

I'm grateful for the ability to see and heed each calling as it revealed itself. I have even more appreciation for my family and the many mentors who helped me recognize each opportunity and supported my efforts to embrace them. The greatest gratitude is that I enjoy the rare privilege of making a living doing what I love to do.

Vocations can be elusive. Calling can come from within or without and is often difficult to hear or translate. Have you found yours? What's the thing that you just can't not do?

(If you find identifying your vocation (AKA the difference only you can make), elusive. The Creative on Purpose Handbook provides a simple 3-step process for starting to dial it in.)

Scott Perry, Chief Difference-Maker at Creative on Purpose.

If what you just read resonated, please share it with a friend.