How Does One Find Their Vocation

In my experience there are three ways to discover your vocation. I recommend that you try all three.

  1. Follow your bliss!
    Figure out where in your life you already feel the juice, and do it on purpose. If there is no juice in your life, find something that you enjoy doing and that will give your life purpose and meaning. And check in from time to time with yourself, as your vocation evolves and changes.
  2. What are you good at? Where does your talent lie?
    Most of us are good at something. We may be good at taking notes, baking cakes, designing web sites, growing tomatoes, repairing cars or raising children. We all have a knack for something that folks around us seem to appreciate. Make a list of all those areas where you caught on quickly, or where you are able to do things better than most folks. Especially include those areas that seem trivial. Use your creative imagination to figure out what they have in common or what commonalities exist among them. Once you have a list, try applying these abilities in all areas of your life. Refine your list over time as you get more information.
  3. Buckaroo Banzai Method
    Remember how Buckaroo Banzai was a rock star surgeon? Young children talk about future careers this way, “I’m going to be a fireman and a astronaut!” Your unique contribution may not have a simple title or involve only a single talent. Do not settle for half of your vocation. Allow your self to fully embrace all of your unique gifts.

Four Archetypes

Posted in

Submitted by katrina on Wed, 06/07/2006 - 1:08pm.

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Recent comments

  • Claire-Marie Le Normond (not verified)

    Wish I could be there. Very well spoken.

    16 weeks 1 day ago
  • David Salisbury (not verified)

    Katrina,
    I wish you all the blessings and power you need on your journey. Thank you for these words. It is good to remember that returning to work (and thus returning to grace) bring a chance for us all to rest and have joy.
    Wishing you joy in the Work.

    David

    18 weeks 3 days ago
  • Sigre (not verified)

    Dear Katrina- Thorn reposted your blog and happy am I. Your passion, always so immense, comes blowing out in these words. So akin to my own heart and soul that it makes me have a bittersweet smile.

    The Storm is only now coming to the edges of our universe and yet it will sweep and consume all that is. In the end, our beautiful universe will be so much...more? Different? Complete? Who knows?

    All I do know is my soul came here to witness and be part in this period. I cannot shrink from the work. I am here with you, fae sister!

    18 weeks 4 days ago
  • Macha NightMare (not verified)

    Thought-provoking piece, Katrina. Thanks.

    I don't know what to call myself either. In Pagandom, I've taken to referring to myself as a Witch at Large. In the interfaith world where I'm active, I call myself a Pagan. Sometimes I call myself an uppity woman or a Second Wave Feminist. I've never really thought to publicly identify myself by my sexuality, het woman, which is very "white bread" and old-fashioned. Not only het, but serially monogamous for the most part. It seems almost a liability these days to say you're het, but I am proudly and happily so. I tend towards intellectualism but only have a BA, which doesn't carry much weight, at least in public and professional worlds, no matter how much you've studied, trained, and can articulate, even teach.

    My biological heritage is Irish, Dutch, French Huguenot, Euro-mongrel. My social heritage is Roman Catholic on one side and conservative Methodist, temperance-crusading, women's rights and education on the other, with distinct East Coast sensibilities, now mellowed by more than half a century living on the Left Coast. My maternal political heritage is conservative Republican (altho what my relatives might think of current trends in the GOP I cannot imagine, since they did have brains and they did think and they did have a social conscience), yet I am much farther left in my outlook than any elected official I know. My paternal political heritage is blue collar Democratic, except that my dad broke with his family on politics and allied with my mother's family's conservatism.

    I'm a former hippie, a home-birth advocate, a home death and green burial advocate, an opponent of capital punishment and resorting to warfare to resolve humankind's differences. I support the right to conscious self-deliverance. I rejoice in any and all consensual expressions of love and eros. I'm a lover and a mom.

    I have never missed voting in an election and I disrespect those who don't avail themselves of this hard-won right. (I have ancestors who fought the Brits in the American Revolution.) I support workers' rights. I recognize our interdependence on this planet, so could be called a greenie. I'm a committed environmentalist in my day-to-day life (in terms of eating locally grown food, expanding public transit, recycling, preserving open space and wildlife, opposing exploitation of natural resources [strip mining, oil-drilling, nuclear facilities, agribusiness, monocultures, clear-cutting timber, overuse of pesticides, genetic modification, etc.]) I want to make the city streets "safe for dancing," as my old friend Tony Serra said when he ran for mayor of SF on the Platypus Party ticket.

    Well, you got me going there, my friend. Thought-provoking read, as I said. ;-)

    xo,
    Macha

    35 weeks 1 day ago
  • Eridanus (not verified)

    Lovely azaleas!

    [cough][gag][snort][sneeze]

    Just lovely...

    I know what you mean.

    37 weeks 4 days ago
  • Anonymous (not verified)

    I feel you. There is too much bs- particularly when people decide that their temperament is tantamount to truthful and ignore everyone else.
    I get irked by immature extroverts or closet introverts who ignore you REPEATEDLY and then pretend you're out of line for being upset by the time they can't pretend you didn't say anything anymore. I find that the same people will ignore you if you blow up right away, too, and that it's because they just don't think that honoring what you value is important to maintaining a relationship, or even worse: that you don't know what you value at all and that it's all a mind game for their pleasure or annoyance. Then they call you passive-aggressive, aggressive, moody, touchy and temperamental. I call them "not listening".

    37 weeks 5 days ago