Jul 2, 2026 · 1 hr 1 min · 8 segments
While Alvina is on vacation, Grace welcomes guest co-host, author and poet Laurel Snyder to discuss the differences between a vocation and a job. They talk about some of the challenges of the idea of…
Grace LinHost
Laurel SnyderGuest
Basically, she's been like a guiding light to me since I started in this business.
And she was doing a podcast for a long time that I loved and now she's doing this new one where basically what they do is every couple weeks they get together and just ask, are you still writing? And it's sort of a way of nodding at the fact that life is complicated and there's all these ebbs and flows and sort of stages to the career in a creative job.
And and sort of just to check in and literally be like, are you still writing? And then basically they always say yes.
But then there's context of like, well, my day job is requiring this or I have a sick kid or, you know, I was frustrated or I'm reading this great book.
I really like things where we see like the person as with your podcast, like where you see the intersection of the personal and the professional.
So this week, Sarah had experienced a loss and it had made her think about about vocation, about like sort of when we go into writing for this lofty goal of making art, whatever it is, making art.
But most of us didn't start out to become children's authors or poets or whatever because we thought it was like the fastest way to make a buck.
But it just made me think in my own life, I've been navigating, I think, as we all do, that question that is particularly pertinent when you get to stages in your career where you've kind of cleared the bar of something you wanted to accomplish or missed the bar of something that you wanted to accomplish or something changed in your life or something.
And you kind of ask yourself, well, like, would I still do this? And as you and I have discussed in the past, I've been thinking a lot lately about retirement and about what it would mean to retire as a as an artist, as a writer.
Like like if I had all the money in the world and would I retire from publishing, would I retire from writing? Those are two very different questions.
So that's sort of I was thinking of it in terms of like, what was it when I started writing? What was it when I was like in high school or in college or when I started publishing? And now I'm like, what is the balance? What about you? Where
Basically, she's been like a guiding light to me since I started in this business.
And she was doing a podcast for a long time that I loved and now she's doing this new one where basically what they do is every couple weeks they get together and just ask, are you still writing? And it's sort of a way of nodding at the fact that life is complicated and there's all these ebbs and flows and sort of stages to the career in a creative job.
And and sort of just to check in and literally be like, are you still writing? And then basically they always say yes.
But then there's context of like, well, my day job is requiring this or I have a sick kid or, you know, I was frustrated or I'm reading this great book.
I really like things where we see like the person as with your podcast, like where you see the intersection of the personal and the professional.
So this week, Sarah had experienced a loss and it had made her think about about vocation, about like sort of when we go into writing for this lofty goal of making art, whatever it is, making art.
But most of us didn't start out to become children's authors or poets or whatever because we thought it was like the fastest way to make a buck.
But it just made me think in my own life, I've been navigating, I think, as we all do, that question that is particularly pertinent when you get to stages in your career where you've kind of cleared the bar of something you wanted to accomplish or missed the bar of something that you wanted to accomplish or something changed in your life or something.
And you kind of ask yourself, well, like, would I still do this? And as you and I have discussed in the past, I've been thinking a lot lately about retirement and about what it would mean to retire as a as an artist, as a writer.
Like like if I had all the money in the world and would I retire from publishing, would I retire from writing? Those are two very different questions.
So that's sort of I was thinking of it in terms of like, what was it when I started writing? What was it when I was like in high school or in college or when I started publishing? And now I'm like, what is the balance? What about you? Where
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