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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. For the third time this week, and we will end the week with this, let's talk about your relationship to work. Today, it's a call-in for anyone who considers your line of work a calling. If you feel called to serve others or called to follow your creative passion, how are the usual rules of work-life balance or the relationship between work and income different for you, do you think, than for most other people? 212-433-WNYC. I'll say it again. It's a call-in for anyone who considers your line of work a calling. If you feel called to serve others or called to follow your creative passion, how are the usual rules of work-life balance or the relationship between work and income different for you than for most people? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

We talked on Tuesday and Wednesday's shows about how much of people's identity and community they derive from their work. It started with the author, Simone Stolzoff, who wrote the new book called The Good Enough Job. You get the idea right from the title. The pursuit of a life not mostly consumed by your work. Of course, the good enough job has to be for good enough pay, and that's a big part of the story and people get exploited. We heard from many callers, however, aiming for that lifestyle, the good enough job where their mental energy, emotional energy, overwhelming amounts of time don't go into their work.

Today, we go the other way. It's a call-in for anyone who considers your line of work a calling. If you feel called to serve others or called to follow your creative passion, how are the usual rules of work-life balance or the relationship between work and income different for you than for most people? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Members of the clergy, I'm inviting you. Social workers, teachers, many healthcare professionals, public interest lawyers, I'm inviting you. How are the usual rules of work-life balance or the relationship between work and income different for you than for most people?

On the creative passion side, artists, creators of all kinds, I'm inviting you, so you can spend your time being a maker, how are the usual rules of work-life balance or the relationship between work and income different for you than for most people, do you think? I think of a few people on the called to serve side tell you a story of someone I know, recent law school grad who took out plenty of law school student loans, like a lot of people, but they are driven to be an immigration lawyer representing the kinds of migrants who've been in the news.

They could go into corporate or other much more lucrative attorney jobs, but they're not even considering that and they work a million hours a week on these tough cases. Does this sound like you? On the creative side, I know there are people who would rather be doing your creative work than just about anything else and spend countless hours a day and per week because your work is your play. Does that sound like you? It's a call-in for anyone who considers your line of work a calling. If you feel called to serve others or called to follow your creative passion, how are the usual rules of work-life balance or the relationship between work and income different for you than for most people? 212-433-WNYC. We'll take your calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC with the call-in for anyone who considers your line of work a calling. If you feel called to serve others or called to follow your creative passion, how are the usual rules of work-life balance or the relationship between work and income different for you than for most people? We'll start with Alice in Brooklyn. Alice, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling in today.

Alice: Thanks, Brian. I started a community acupuncture clinic, which is an affordable sliding-scale clinic. I actually worked at a clinic for seven years as the office manager and it closed during COVID right when I was set to graduate. My business partner and I decided, as soon as things started to be safe enough for people to be treated in one big community acupuncture room, to open a clinic. Very scary. Almost as scary as calling into the radio. I think we're about--

Brian Lehrer: Probably much more scary than that.

Alice: That's true.

Brian Lehrer: You started this. Do you find yourself working a gazillion hours, and when people say, "Oh, work-life balance, good enough job," you think, "That's for other people."?

Alice: We're pretty reasonable on the hours. I think that's part of being an acupuncturist and knowing rest is important. My business partner and I did invest a lot of money and we worked for about two years before we opened, and we're about six months in now and we have yet to take a paycheck. I think that's where the strange balance comes into place, but I think that's true. In any small business, there's a lot of startup costs. Then when your small business's purpose is not to make money but to provide affordable care, it becomes even more of an issue.

Brian Lehrer: A calling. Alice, good luck with it. Thank you very much. Molly in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Molly.

Molly: Hi. [inaudible 00:06:01].

Brian Lehrer: Uh-oh. Looks like we have a bad connection. Try one more time. Go ahead.

Molly: Oh. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: At the moment. Go ahead. Give it a shot.

Molly: Oh, great. Thanks for taking my call. I own a small business in New York. I started right before the pandemic doing wedding flowers. Then, right during the pandemic I started another company with a friend of mine I went to college with, and we blow glass together. We make barware and vases. I would say that our relationship to a work-life balance is definitely different from someone who goes to a normal nine-to-five. We work what feels like all the time, but it's also not in a complaining way. When your life's passion is your work, it doesn't really feel like work even though it's a lot of work, so it's definitely different in that regard. There's no clocking out. There's no normal schedule, if you will. Our income depends on how hard we work, so it really is a matter of you get in what you put out. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: Interesting that the first two callers we took on this, and I see there are others like you on the board, are people who started your own businesses. You think it would be harder to find the same kind of work satisfaction working for someone?

Molly: Yes. I think both my partner and I have spent many years working for people and we still do. The value of working for someone else is learning from them what you want to do and what you don't want to do, but there definitely comes a point in time where you could either keep complaining about how your boss isn't doing what you want or it's not going the way you want, or you could just do it yourself. The pandemic was a terrifying time to start something, but it was also almost the best time to start something because you say, "What's the worst that can happen?"

Brian Lehrer: Molly, good luck. Thank you very much. Billy in Bloomfield, you're on WNYC. Hi, Billy.

Billy: Hi, Brian. I'm so thrilled to be on. I'm a full-time musician, so I think the hours that I work probably make some people want to hurl. Yesterday I worked from 2:00 PM to 2:00 AM teaching lessons and then driving down to Philadelphia for a gig. A 12-hour workday, I probably made a total of $200, which works out to, I don't know, whatever that is, $15, $16 an hour over that 12-hour span of time.

Brian Lehrer: Why do you do it? I'm friends with somebody who was a musician and successful on a certain level, but was working a gazillion hours and not making much money and ultimately gave it up. He said, "I love music, but I can't do this."

Billy: That's, I think, is a fair point. I do it because I love it and because it brings me so much joy and because I really designed my life around the happiness and flexibility that it gives me, because not only do I get to travel and see lots of the world and lots of the country, I also get mornings off. I can sleep in. I can make myself breakfast. I can spend time with my partner in non-standard hours. I may be working a Saturday, but I might be able to go out to brunch on a Wednesday morning. You get flexibility in different aspects of your life that I think has really been joyful for me. Also, there's nothing better than making music for a living. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Billy, thank you very much. Keep it up. Good luck out there. Bob in Blairstown, you're on WNYC. Hi, Bob.

Bob: Good morning, Brian. I'm a volunteer firefighter EMT out here in Blairstown. EMT 30 years, firefighter 4 years, volunteer we don't get paid. It's a calling.

Brian Lehrer: You do that on top of a paid job?

Bob: I'm already retired, but I was doing it when I was working and now I continue to do it when I'm home here, doing nothing. I have a pager. We all have pagers. Someone has a problem, they call 911 and they page us out and send us either to a structure fire, a bonfire, or a medical emergency, and we go, get an engine or we get an ambulance and we go.

Brian Lehrer: For people in maybe bigger places where there are paid firefighters, paid emergency services departments, what would you say if they're thinking, "God, that's crazy to rely on. It's unfair to rely on citizens of the town to be the volunteers to do this dangerous and sometimes time-consuming work. There should be a department. It should be paid by taxpayers."

Bob: Some towns don't have enough population, they don't have enough income to pay firefighters and to pay ambulance workers. Those in the community who want to be an asset to the community volunteer because that's what they want to do, not because they have to do it.

Brian Lehrer: Bob, thank you very much. Good luck out there and thank you for your service. Olivia in Bed-Stuy, you're on WNYC. Hi, Olivia.

Olivia: Hey, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I'm a longtime listener. Actually, I listen every morning while I'm doing one of my three jobs that I do this morning. I'm an actor, filmmaker, writer by love. I went to a fancy school, a little-known fancy school in Boston, and I technically could be doing something, one job that made a lot more money, but I don't want to. I work three odd jobs, in sales and editing, and tutoring to make my dreams work. I write in between sessions. It's actually probably more than full-time at this point since I don't really have any days off, given my schedule. It's not actually flexible, even though technically it's supposed to be.

Every time, I'm in my 30s now and I keep saying, "Am I going to get tired and just want to have the stability of knowing I can pay my rent every month?," or whatever, being able to take care of a family and yet I can't imagine doing anything else. I just keep working these two or three jobs. Partially, the system is broken and it's not set up to support artists and yet I'm still here. I'm still doing it because I love it.

Brian Lehrer: We started the show this morning with a representative of the Writers Guild on the writers' strike. There's so much anger there right now for how people in all kinds of creative jobs are being exploited. When you see that going on at the same time, does it give you any additional pause, or is that over there and you're over here?

Olivia: No, I'm definitely in it. You can't help but be in it. I'm pre-WGA. I started in the pandemic, because there wasn't acting work. I switched back into writing, which was my first love. It's frustrating because I see classmates from this school I went to [chuckles] on the other side of the fence, so to speak, who are moving up into executive ranks. It's really interesting to watch how those two paths veered and yet I have tons of friends who are also in the writers' strike but they are tutoring on the side, too, to make ends meet. It's frustrating, but I also feel like you have to keep trying to make the system better or you join the dark side.

Brian Lehrer: Good way to put it. Olivia, thank you. All right, we're going to sneak one more in here. William in Washington Heights. William, we have exactly 20 seconds for you. Go for it. What's your passion? What's your calling?

William: All right. I'm a mediator, family court in CCRB. I'm focused on long-term relationships and keeping them going. As a quick aside, I was the person who pulled the patch when WNYC TV went off the air in 1996 since you were acknowledging The Takeaway this morning, I thought I'd-- We've worked together back when you were on TV.

Brian Lehrer: I think I know who you are now that you say it. I'm glad you got into something as fulfilling as mediation work. William, thank you for touching base. That is the Brian Lehrer show for today. Produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen produces our Daily Politics podcast. We had Matt Marando at the audio controls today. Have a great weekend everyone, and stay tuned for Alison.

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