Stephen King quote. Life is not a support system for your
work; your work is a support system for your life. No
amount of success is worth losing the ones you love the
most. I am still learning this, still swallowing my pride and
ambition and learning to move my desk out from the middle
of the room. Each time I take the day off to go to the zoo
with my family, I don’t regret it. Every time I close the
laptop to watch a movie with my wife or get up with my son
in the middle of the night before a speaking gig, I remember
these are not interruptions to the call; they are the most
significant parts of the process.
There is an old episode of The Simpsons in which Homer
leaves his despised job at the nuclear power plant to pursue
his dream of working at a bowling alley. When he hears
news around town that his wife is pregnant and that he
won’t be able to support his family, he is forced to return to
the power plant, where his former boss, Mr. Burns, makes
him beg for his job back. To further humiliate him, Mr.
Burns places a plaque in Homer’s office that says, “Don’t
forget; you’re here forever.” But by the end of the episode,
Homer has taken all the pictures of his daughter Maggie and
taped them to the plaque so that it now reads, “Do it for
her.”^11
In the journey toward our callings, there will be
roadblocks and inconveniences, setbacks and slowdowns
that we may mistake for distractions when in fact they are as
much a part of the calling as the job itself. Right now, a
good friend is in the middle of realizing this as he transitions