Vocation or Avocation

I seem to go thru this thought process every year. What should your job be? Should it be your vocation (i.e. the thing you do to earn money and put bread on the table) or should it be your avocation (i.e. the thing which fulfills you and makes the best use of your talents)? Most successful people credit their success to aligning their job with their loves (Roger Ebert and movies, Rush Limbaugh and entertaining/opining, etc.) yet sometimes one has to wonder whether that is the rule or the exception. After all, the curse of Adam said "You will get food from the toil of your back..." not "...and you should find some toil you find personally fulfilling, too." Yet, God made us for a purpose, to have a specific place in the world, and a specific role in the Body of Christ.

I know I am talking to a skewed audience here, with so many pastoral students and graduates among our contributors. But I am curious what our posters and readers feel about this eternal debate between "living to work" and "working to live."