Post 4 - Search For My Purpose

  Search For My Purpose

          As I began the search for my purpose, I recognized a signpost that had been placed in front of me years previously.  At that time, I was not searching for my purpose and I missed it.

I was working for a computer company, and my employer assigned me to the job of writing educational materials.  I did not merely choose to be a writer because it was the ‘cool’ thing to do, and I did not discover I had that ability, my employer did. 

An important point here is that my employer did not make me a writer, my employer merely recognized a God-given ability I did not realize I had, and assigned me to that work because it saved the company a considerable amount of money.  Helping customers solve their problems is very expensive, and well written instruction books reduce that expense.

I enjoyed the writing, but I did not enjoy the aggravation of going through the review process for everything I put on paper.  That should have told me ‘writing’ could be my purpose, because God does not give a person a purpose they do not enjoy, but I needed to learn the discipline of examining the facts and describing them carefully.

I spent more than ten years learning that discipline, with an editor and about a dozen engineers reviewing and criticizing every paragraph I wrote.  I did not realize they were teaching me how to write better, but eventually I learned from them that every word is important, not only to editors and reviewers but also to readers.

Unfortunately, I did not recognize this success at ‘writing’ as a signpost the first time it was put in front of me.  Years later, that signpost was put in front of me again, and I realized I had seen it before.  This second time I paid attention to it.

Other signposts were put in front of me, and I missed each of them.

The second signpost was a biography I wrote for a well-known artist.  He was a friend of my grandfather, who was a ‘pot hunter’.  When I was young, our family ate the fish and oysters my grandfather and my father caught from the Chesapeake Bay, and the ducks they killed ‘for the pot.’  Duck hunters need decoys, fake ducks that were carved from wood in those days, and this friend of my grandfather was an outstanding decoy carver.  His ducks were so realistic that some people bought them to display as works of art, and these ‘mantle place birds,’ as he called them, eventually made him famous.  He is considered by many to be one of the pioneers of today’s popular wildfowl art movement.

My mother called me, said this friend of my grandfather had suffered a stroke and was confined to his bed.  She suggested I write a book about him because he was being recognized as an important artist.  She said I needed to hurry.  I visited him and asked if I could write the book.  At first he was reluctant, but I found a publisher to print it, and he agreed to let me write it.  His daughter sent me letters that I turned into a biography.  Enough copies of the book sold that the publisher considered it a success and wanted me to write another book.  That was a sign I could write about something besides computer programs, but I did not have the proper experience to write another book for that publisher’s audience, so I did not accept his offer.  I did not consider myself to be a writer, it was merely a job.  

 The next signpost came when my brother asked me to write a book to defend the Chesapeake oystermen.  Oysters were becoming scarce in the bay, and marine scientists were claiming the problem was caused by the oystermen catching so many that not enough remained in the bay to multiply and replenish those being caught.  These scientists were recommending that the state of Maryland place severe restrictions on the oystermen, so severe the oystermen would be put out of business.  The oystermen claimed they were the victims, not the villains, they said pollution running off the land was killing oysters, and that was the reason for the decline.  

I wrote the book, using mostly my brother’s experience as my source material, and I tried to find a publisher for it.  The book was turned down, so I decided to publish it myself.  Sales were slow until a distributor in the Baltimore area put the book in his catalog, then it became very popular in bookstores around the bay.  It caught the attention of the Maryland legislators and the restrictions were never passed.  The book sold enough copies that I made more money on it than my annual salary for my regular job of writing about computer systems.  This proved my writing would sell, but I did not have another marketable subject so I continued writing about computer systems.  I still did not consider myself a writer.

The next signpost came when the director of a non-profit group asked me to write a request for a financial grant to complete a study about an impending environmental disaster.  The population of an important island was growing so much it would soon pollute the drinking water, making the island uninhabitable.

I volunteered to write the request, it was for a large grant of money and the director was informed that our request was the best of more than eight hundred seeking the available funds, and some of those requests were written by professional grant seekers.  I did not make any money by writing that request, and only a few people read it.  Still, it was a big success.  The committee that read the request gave the funds to the environmental group, and they created a plan that would save enough land from development to protect the drinking water on the island.

I learned from this that a success in writing does not depend on selling a lot of books.  Your audience is not always large, but you can accomplish a worthwhile goal, anyway, by merely meeting a need. God sometimes gives us a job where we work in the shadows and never appear in the glare of the spotlight.

This success, meager as it was, served as a signpost showing that I could write about a variety of subjects, but I still did not consider ‘writing’ to be my purpose, so I tried to start a business when my job disappeared because of downsizing.  It lost money.

My failure at that business was a signpost I could not miss.  I obviously did not have the natural ability to run a business, this was not the first time I had seen that sign.  Earlier, I had failed in the publishing business until a distributor put my book in his catalog and began selling it.  He took over the business part of the publishing and left me with only the ‘writing’ part, and I was successful at that.

My failures in business were unmistakable signs that this was not what God intended for me.  I could easily see the way the signposts were pointing.

I knew what I should not do, but what should I do?  What was my purpose?

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