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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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If there’s something you must do, income and vocation might clash

By David McElroy · December 1, 2017

It was an odd feeling Friday to meet a couple at a house that’s for sale — and to be the “expert” to help guide them through their process of evaluating whether to make an offer on it.

Even though I’ve worked for a real estate company — in one capacity or another — for a couple of years now, it was my first time to be the licensed agent showing the house and hoping to write an offer. Everything went well and I’m showing them another house Saturday. I hope I can help them find what they’re looking for.

To be honest, I know I can do this job well. I’ve worked extensively with the ins and outs of contracts and negotiation and managing the closing process for more than a year now. Nothing about it is intimidating to me.

I also know I can make a lot of money doing this job. If I average closing just two houses a month, I should be able to bring in more than $100,000 in 2018. I haven’t made anything close to that kind of money since I got out of politics. I’ve gone through such a dark period that the money sounds really good. This is a business in which I can become wealthy after a few years if I choose to.

I have solid financial plans and projections, but there’s still the matter of my identity. I can make a lot of money doing this. I can help a lot of people get what they want. But it will never be who I am.

About 15 years ago, someone I know in Tuscaloosa saw a display of new books on campus at the University of Alabama. She called me in excitement.

“You have got to buy this book,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything that more perfectly describes who you are and what you do.”

The book was called “Thinking for a Living,” by Joey Reiman. He was one of the brightest stars of the advertising business until the middle of the 1990s, when he announced he was closing his successful advertising agency in Minneapolis and moving to the South. In Atlanta, he founded a company called BrightHouse — a company based on the idea of gathering a group of bright people who clients would hire to think about their problems and come up with solutions.

It sounds a lot like traditional consulting, but Reiman put more emphasis on pure creative thinking than traditional business analysis. He was so successful that the Boston Consulting Group eventually bought the firm.

What does this have to do with me? What was it that made my friend so excited when she discovered this book?

There are several different ways to explain what I am — what my identity is. Although I still feel unworthy of the title, I think of myself as an artist, because that best describes what I have a need to produce. But at my core, what do I actually do best? What do I have a passionate need to do?

More than anything else, I have to observe the world and think about what I see, then come up with insights and ideas to explain what I synthesize. I have to ask questions. I have to be curious. I have to make connections that others haven’t seen. I have to share those insights. That’s simply who I am.

Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “You don’t write because you want to say something. You write because you have something to say.”

That might seem like an odd distinction, but I know what he meant. In the purest sense, I don’t really want to say anything. I’d rather just keep my mouth shut and let the world burn on its own. But I can’t, because I see things and feel things that I somehow must say.

I have to be this observer and synthesizer and thinker.

I can’t help it. In various ways, I will always produce works of art — hopefully better and more original art in time — to express the ideas which have slowly coalesced in me. I don’t have any choice about that. It’s a burning need — and I need someone in my life who cares what I have to say.

That’s my identity, but it doesn’t really make much money for me. Not yet.

Today, we think of a vocation as being the same as a job or career, but that’s not what it’s always meant. The word comes from the Christian church — and it originally referred to a calling that a person felt. A vocation was something holy. It was something that came from inside — something which said this is what this person must do to obey what he was created to be.

What I’ve described is my vocation, but it’s not the way I can make a good living. At least not right now.

The world doesn’t tend to pay well for people who observe and think and talk. But I need money — lots of it — to support a family in the near future and to make up for stumbling around so much for much of the last couple of decades trying to figure out some things.

So that means my career and my vocation will have to run on parallel tracks for the time being. Maybe they can merge in the future. Maybe not.

In the meantime, I can gladly serve the people who have real estate needs that I know how to serve. Helping others in this way will never be my vocation, but it can serve my needs if I’m willing to serve the needs of others.

I would love to be paid well for my vocation. Maybe there will come a time when I can make the sort of art that people will enjoy enough that it will be wildly profitable, but entertaining them will never be enough. If I can’t make art that expresses the things I need to say, mere entertainment will seem like a waste of time.

So I’ll be showing houses for now. I hope I’ll be writing a lot of offers and closing a lot of contracts. I hope my wealth will quickly grow and the painful poverty of the past few years will soon be just a bad memory.

But as I’m working hard at selling houses and helping people find what they want, my true vocation will be churning away in the background. I’ll still be observing and thinking and synthesizing. I don’t have any choice. It’s simply something I have to do.

I’ll be happy to make a lot of money, but the most valuable things I have to offer are those things which nobody is willing to pay for right now.

Maybe it’s ego or delusion — it really might be — but I’m still confident that people will one day pay dearly to hear what I have to say.

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It was too cloudy last night for me to take a phot It was too cloudy last night for me to take a photo of the lunar eclipse, so I missed the beautiful red image that I saw from others. But the sky overhead tonight is crystal clear — and the moon seemed especially bright — so I snapped a shot anyway. I don’t really have the right lens for this since I have to blow it up massively when I shoot at 240mm. Surprisingly, this image was made at 1/250th of a second at f/6.3 and ISO 250. I’d like to have a longer lens for such a shot, but it’s not worth the money since I’d rarely use it. #nature #naturephotography #sky #moon
The aftermath of sunset looked soft and pastel Tue The aftermath of sunset looked soft and pastel Tuesday evening. #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
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The Saturday evening sunset punches through the he The Saturday evening sunset punches through the heavy clouds sitting just over the horizon, just enough to create a spectacular orange show as the world spins toward another night of darkness. #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
This was sunset just east of Birmingham Wednesday This was sunset just east of Birmingham Wednesday evening behind the restaurant where I had dinner. #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
One of the best things about this time of year is One of the best things about this time of year is that I see far more sunsets since they occur later in the evening. #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
I caught just the very end of sunset through the t I caught just the very end of sunset through the trees behind the restaurant where I’m eating Tuesday evening. #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
One of the things I really enjoy about spring is h One of the things I really enjoy about spring is having sunsets later in the evening. Here’s the one I just watched while I was at dinner. #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
I just caught the very end of sunset, but I loved I just caught the very end of sunset, but I loved how the fading colors looked behind the evening clouds. #nature #naturephotography #sky #colorful #clouds #sunset #birmingham #alabama
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For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to Sam. In 2009, I took in a young feral cat who I named for the early American revolutionary Samuel Adams. He was one of the most confident — downright arrogant, in fact — cats I’ve ever been around. He had an amazing personality and I immediately loved him. He was no more than 8 or 9 months old when he suddenly died for reasons that my vet couldn’t explain. Even though I had him only a short time, he was one of my all-time favorites. #tbt #cats #tabby #feral #birmingham #alabama
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Lucy has been happily rolling around in the freshl Lucy has been happily rolling around in the freshly cut grass of the back yard Wednesday evening. #dog #dogs #dogstagram #dogsofinstagram #cute #cutedog #pets #petstagram #petsofinstagram #instadog #ilovedogs #birmingham #alabama
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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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