What if you spend a large portion of your life pursuing a career, a calling, that is tightly entwined with your sense of being, then one day or over time you become disenchanted with that vocation but feel stuck because it is all that you know? I honestly don’t know of too many occupations that are like that. I can imagine that someone that has built a career around their personality might have this problem. There are a lot of people doing this now with blogs, YouTube channels, and podcasts. They have set themselves up as go-to authorities on specific subjects such as entrepreneurship, cooking/diet, exercise, crafts, toys, and the list goes on. Imagine building a following and earning a living with a YouTube channel focusing on grilling food. Then after a number of years, you are making enough money to support you and your family but you start losing interest with grilling. Maybe you learn that grilling is not the best way to prepare food or maybe you start to believe that grilling may actually be harmful to people. What do you do? What is the struggle that you have?
The career that I most associate with this potential dilemma is that of clergy (pastor, priest, imam, rabbi, pujari, etc). This person has usually grown up in this faith, obtained theological training, and then lived a life where their faith was top of mind at all time. They may provide pastoral care, lead services, guide prayers, and so on to lay people that look at them as having religious authority. Imagine being a middle-aged pastor that has developed doubt, or even, disbelief. How does this person handle that? They must continue to provide pastoral care while sorting out their beliefs.
The central conflict of this story would be the pastor’s struggle with his faith but an external struggle is needed to make it interesting.
So, if you are interested in building a story off of this premise…do it. And send me a link to the final product.
