Earlier this year, after forty years in advertising, I walked away from my career and its accompanying six-figure salary. Sure, I was approaching retirement age, but I knew I still had some gas in the tank. I could have successfully continued in my job as a pharma advertising copywriter for another five years or so. But something inside me had changed.
If you’ve glimpsed my recent book Wake Up Call: Daily Insights for the Spiritually Curious, this might come as no surprise. You’ll know that I’ve been writing a weekly spirituality column called Wake Up Call at Patheos for about twelve years. And, little by little, as I immersed myself in the spirituality books, articles, and occasional podcasts that I wrote about, writing pharmaceutical journal ads began to hold less interest. A lot less.
Over the last few years in advertising, my usual 100% work-effort had dipped to 90% or 80%. (Okay, maybe 70%.) But it really wasn’t a fair fight. Every day I had to ask myself: Should I spend the early morning hours perusing the clinical studies of a new drug—or dig into Thomas Moore’s latest exploration of the soul? Should I read through an 80-page focus group study—or immerse myself in a new book on the secret sayings of Jesus?
You get the picture. What held meaning and importance to me had changed in both my head and my heart. When I had a new story with a message that I thought was vital for my audience to hear, I could spend hours writing and rewriting the headline that might pull readers in. The time I once spent fine-tuning copy for a cholesterol-lowering drug was now spent crafting headlines for a fresh way to energize the spirit.
I traded Madison Avenue for the Mystic Path
We all have our own paths in life. On my path, I had become an archivist, a collector of spiritual ideas. It works like this: When I read a spirituality book or article, I scan it for the single most important point that the author is trying to get across. (Sometimes there are several.) I then “frame” the message, turning it into a short story, usually about a thousand words long. This includes my interpretation of what it means and why I think it’s important.
In a way, I’m like one of the old guys you might see on the beach with the floppy hat and metal detector, scanning the sand for buried trinkets and treasures. Only I’m a spiritual beachcomber. Sometimes what I find has little merit and I toss it in the trash. But, because I vet each book before I read it, I often find things of real value. And while other beachcombers might put the treasures they find in their pockets or sacks tied to their belt loops, I hold them aloft for the world to see.
The story behind the writing of Wake Up Call, the book
Much of the book was written over the recent decade I spent commuting from my home on the Jersey Shore to an office in mid-town Manhattan. I was an “extreme commuter,” spending upwards of five-and-a-half hours a day in a car, on a bus, walking, or on the subway. I tried to make the most of my time, reading, listening to podcasts, looking for ideas that might resonate with me and my readers, and writing about it all.
The result was about 500 stories published in my weekly Wake Up Call column. For the book, I organized my writings into categories, one for each day of the week: Inspiration, Awareness, Character, Calling, Practice, Inner Work, and Contemplation. I then had the difficult task of cutting down my many stories to a book-sized length. What were the criteria for the stories that made it? As I wrote in the intro to the book:
Some of these stories stirred controversy among my diverse group of readers, as I wandered outside the lines and challenged some traditional religious beliefs. But many of my columns seemed to meet a real need for my fellow wisdom-seekers, resulting in scores of positive comments and social media shares. Gathered here in book form are 112 of these stories, which include fan favorites, several that were controversial, and many that are especially important or meaningful to me.
I invite you to check out Wake Up Call: Daily Insights for the Spiritually Curious and see what I’ve discovered in my search for meaning. In the meantime, it’s back to work as I plot my next weekly column and plan for book two. (I’m currently in the midst of reading five different books, have six books in my “to-read” pile, and two that I’ve recently completed and need to reexamine.) Time to again get out my metal detector and scan the beach for the hidden treasures I know are there.
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