“The secret of success…is making your vocation your vacation.” – Mark Twain As I read this quote I started looking back on my career and I can honestly say that I did just as Mark Train suggested many years ago. My hobbies were first writing and then speaking. In 1960 I started getting serious about sitting down and writing and I have been at it ever since. As far as speaking goes, I got that urge in the very early 1970’s and I haven’t quit yet. The fact that in 1983 I had put in 35 years with the railroad and was very fortunate to get an early quit made it possible for me to go into full time writing and speaking at that time. I seldom took vacations as such. I would work them into speaking assignments. I always asked myself, what do I need a vacation for? From what? From doing what I truly enjoy? I feel as if I have been on vacation since 1983 and yet I have often put in long hours and really busy weeks. It was just that I was doing what I wanted to do my way and that makes all the difference in the world. I have been constantly using my imagination and that is invigorating and rewarding. When people look at me and say, “When are you going to quit, Art?” I say, “Quit what?” I wish everyone could find something that they would gladly do whether people paid them or not and then let them get paid well for doing just that. That is what I would call a great career, a great job; discovering your special talents and then putting them to work for the good of all humankind. I wish you well in finding your special thing.
I’ll be half your age at the end of this year (the big ‘4-0’) and I am still looking for my special thing. Don’t get me wrong, I have a great job, a terrific wife and children, nothing really to complain about. But, I definitely would like to find that thing that I am special at. I believe it is the ‘art’ (no pun intended) of giving good advice, but people don’t seem to hear me when I inform them, they get it after the fact, as if someone else gave them the idea, another person other than myself, and I just sit there thinking (“Didn’t I tell you that a week or two ago, or a month ago?”) And they are there spoutting off about how someone else told them the idea. Do I just keep trying and eventually they listen?