Are You Makin' A Livin' or Livin' A Dream?

 

I’ve never considered myself lucky.  

I‘ve never really given any thought to whether other people love their job.

I can’t imagine being one of those people that prays a snowstorm hits, so I don’t have to go to work and can be stuck in the house.

I get to go to work every day and I LOVE it.  I get to work with the love of my life every single day and (most) days love that, too.  Yes, I even GOT to get up at 3:30 am to check on a newborn calf that my husband delivered 30 minutes earlier.  Raising livestock is a labor of love not something you want to feel like you HAVE to go do.

Don’t get me wrong some days are harder than others, but I get to work in what I consider the best job in the world.  I have a friend that is a hair stylist and she thinks she has the best job in the world making women beautiful and helping them feel wonderful about themselves.  The two of us have talked about this before: we don’t understand how people go to work every day and not even like what they do.  My goal in life is to encourage my kids to try enough things that they find what they truly LOVE. 

 

My brother is an agriculture economist.  I know what most of you are thinking “A what?”  He works with numbers and spreadsheets.  He actually analyzes the numbers in the government reports and understands them.  He LOVES his job.  I would HATE his job.  I do not want to be in an office in front of a computer.  I do not like to fly to business meetings and conferences every other week, but I don’t have my brother’s job and I am glad he has found something he enjoys, even though we don’t get to see him as often as we would like.

 

If you have young people or adults in your life that pray for those days when they don’t have to go to work, I challenge you to help them to find their passion…encourage them to try new things and step out of what they know.  Help them live a life in which their “Vocation is a Vacation.”

I don’t care if my kids make a million dollars, but I have found that people who love their job are better at it and more successful than those who are just punching a time card.  This is my advice to kids trying to find their place in the world in a quote from Howard Thurman, “Don’t ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes you come alive.  And go do it.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Chris LeDoux also said, “While some folks are makin’ a livin’ others are livin’ their dreams.”  Which do you want your kids to be?  Which one are you?

 

If you like these quotes you will love the Facebook page called The Farm Theory put together by a group of students at Oklahoma State University.

A special thanks to Larry and Rudy for their posts and a couple of FFA kids spending time with me that really made me think about how lucky I am to be Living My Dream.

-A Kansas Farm Mom