Commit to Creativity as a Vocation

Even When You're Struggling and Unsure

Maine Heart Lobster by Shelley Burbank. Staedrler double-ended fibre-tip pens on medium weight sketch book paper.

In This Issue

• A short note from Shelley

• Artwork inspiration

• June/July Pappus Essay

• Journal Prompt

• Fiction: Segment from The Peony Hotel

• NEW SECTION—What I’m Reading

• Writing Update

A Short Note From Shelley

Dear Friend,

Time got away from me this summer, so welcome to the double June/July 2026 issue of Pink Dandy. June started out slow enough. I dug in the garden, planted some new shade perennials and another female winterberry bush and a few herbs and veggies: thyme, dill, a zucchini, six cherry tomatoes, and some basil. I mowed the lawn and replaced the mailbox (or was that in May?) and helped my sister-in-law set up a raised garden box for her own plant experiements. I took rides with neighbors generous with their pontoon boat and saw the new eagle babies in their nest at the top of a huge pine overlooking the lake. I met friends for lunch.

And then Craig arrived from Guam and life picked up speed and before I knew it, July 4th was here. We hosted a big holiday gathering: parents, sibling, offspring and offsprings’ significant others and spouse. Friends and neighbors stopped by. I was on my feet all but maybe 15 minutes that day from 8 AM to 5 PM when we all finally trooped down to the nearby community beach area on the lake to kayak, float on big floaty chairs, paint rocks in pretty designs, and watch the fireworks exploding over the cove across the lake once dusk settled. Sparklers and glow stick necklaces.

A neighbor I didn’t know with his three kids on bikes watched, too, (one of the niece’s boyfriends handed them some glow necklaces . . . so sweet!) and one of them began singing the American National Anthem at the end of the show, so we joined in. It was lovely.

And then, the tick bite.

I won’t go into it too much, but it was a nymph—just a tiny little thing I probably picked up in some deep leaf litter in the woods we were working in one day. I ended up infected with something called anaplasmosis, and it’s dangerous. At one point, I had the distinct feeling it could kill me if I didn’t pay attention and symptoms worsened. I’m now on the mend, however, and the experience has inspired me to clean up my diet.

So here I am a week later, and this newsletter is finally ready to send. Here you’ll read about the inspo behind this month’s lobster art. I’ll share a journal prompt after the pappus essay about committing to creativity as a vocation. As promised, there’s a new segment of the Guam story. You’ll get an update on my writing projects, as usual, and this month I’m adding a new section What I’m Reading. Maybe you’ll discover your next new novel or author.

It’s dawning on me that I view Pink Dandelions as much more than an author newsletter. It’s that, but even if I stopped publishing fiction, I’d keep this newsletter going because it is, of itself, a creative project dear to my heart. I hope you enjoy it. Drop me a comment or hit reply to email if you do.

Cheers!

Shelley

Artwork Inspo

This month’s art, Maine Heart Lobster, was inspired by my love for my home state. Maine is more than lobsters, of course, but the lobster is an iconic symbol of this place, a reminder of briny ocean scents, rocky coasts, lighthouses, fishing boats chugging into the harbor or out the channel. I made this one a blue and orange parti-colored beauty, a jewel of the sea, as a tribute to Maine—where beauty can often be found in deep and secret places and brought to the surface sometimes under the duress of a trap. I think there might be a lesson there.

June/July Pappus Essay: Commit to Creativity as a Vocation

Even When You Are Struggling and Unsure

Are you feeling that everything you are doing creatively and energetically is getting you nowhere? Do you sometimes wonder if it’s worth the time and effort to grow in your chosen hobby, profession, or non-profit volunteer work? Are you wondering if pursuing your interests is a waste of time that could be better spent doing something with a guaranteed outcome or reward?

I’ve been struggling with this lately. There are always doubts when you are a writer or artist, and I have a sneaky feeling there are also doubts in other fields, as well. “Did I make the right career choice? Should I have been a business major instead of an English lit major? Should I have started a YouTube channel about makeup/crypto/yoga/gossip ten years ago instead of sticking with my paralegal/admin assistant/data processing job that AI might wipe out in the next three years?”

I’m aware that we are all struggling.

If you are a writer, like me, you’re probably looking at the AI disruption, the over-crowded marketplace, the stats on the declining number of people who read even one book per year; you might be looking at your own sales numbers, your submission acceptances, your contest entries. You might be taking all this in and asking yourself, “Is it worth the effort anymore? If no one reads my work, is there any point of creating it?”

If you aren’t a writer, you might be feeling this about your volunteer work or even your profession. “I’m putting my heart and soul into helping this cause, and for what? Is it worth it? I’m giving my all to this company, but I feel unappreciated and stressed. Is it worth it?”

Lately, I’ve been feeling all this so hard.

My writing life has always sustained and supported me in more ways than I probably understand. I’m beginning to recognize that one of those supports was HOPE. Having hope kept me motivated. Having hope let me scramble over obstacles and keep going. I’m not even sure I had a clear vision of what I hoped. It was amorphous, and that’s what kept me from recognizing the importance of hope. I didn’t know what, exactly, I hoped for other than a vague, “I will work toward becoming a professional author.”

I think for me that meant I’d earn, through my writing, at least the equivalent of a teacher’s salary, since my profession would have been teaching English/Language Arts if I’d used my education degree as originally planned. Later, as those years slipped by to the point that unless I became a best-selling author tout de suit I’d never catch up to alternate-me’s lifetime earnings, I came up with an even more modest earnings goal: making the equivalent of a year’s minimum wage job. Now I’m beginning to come to grips with the reality that I’m unlikely to reach even that goal.

If you think this is easy for me to talk about, you’re wrong. It is painful. My heart hurts. The sense that I might have wasted my entire youth, energy, and earning potential on a pipe dream feels like losing. Feels like defeat. Feels like failure.

I’m going on 60 now, nearly to retirement age. Should I simply . . . stop?

There are certain questions that keep me occupied these days. If you aren’t making a living from your work, can you call it a profession or is it a hobby? Can it be something else? Something even more profound? Is there some positive way of looking at the creative impulse within me that I keep separate from capitalism and earnings and would allow me to move forward with joy, peace, and purpose?

After much consideration, I’ve decided: Yes. It can be a vocation.

Hobby v. Profession v. Vocation

A profession is work for which you’ve studied, prepared, and get paid for. A hobby is an activity in which you engage for enjoyment, not payment. A vocation is something deeper. It could also be your profession. It could also start out as a hobby. What makes the difference is your feeling about it. A vocation comes from the heart not the head, from emotion not reason. You nurture a vocation because you must, not because it makes sense.

According the the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary online, the word vocation comes from the Latin vocāre which means “to call.” As in a “calling.” The word was first used in English in the 15th century, specifically in relation to “a calling from God to perform a particular task or function in life, especially a religious one.” [see: merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/vocation-2022-06-07]

Hobbies are great. There’s nothing wrong with having a hobby. In fact, hobbies give us a lot of joy, opportunities for camaraderie and socializing, keep our brains sharp, and fight ennui and boredom. If your creative/intellectual/societal interests are fun for you at the hobby level, that’s awesome. I have a few: Knitting. Drawing and collage. Reading. Gardening. Keeping a journal.

I’m rarely bored.

If, however, your major interest or passion goes beyond the hobby level because you feel an almost divine pull toward it and it doesn’t bring you fun so much as a sense that you are doing what you’re supposed to be doing; if you approach it like important deep work, but you haven’t been able to turn it into your profession, perhaps can be—in profound and profoundly satisfying ways—your vocation instead.

Knitting will never pull at my soul the way writing does. Gardening doesn’t feel like something I can’t not do. On the other hand, I’ll never be able to stop writing or sharing my writing any way I can (because story tellers need story readers. This I believe.) I’m pretty sure I was born to be a writer. I took to story telling even before I knew how to write, but once I put the two together, I felt compelled to do it.

It was a calling.

So, even now as I’m in a bit of a funk over the business side of trying to be a professional writer, I am embracing the art of writing as my vocation. I am letting go the desire to make a significant amount of money from my work, letting go the hope of making any money at it at all.

My vocation is writing. Your vocation might be art. It might be teaching. It might be parenting. It might be gardening. It might be homemaking. It might be serving in a religious capacity. It might be bee-keeping. It might be advocacy—for the oppressed, for animals, for the environment. It might be music, theater, or stand-up comedy. If you can’t make a living or even a partial living with your creative practice, make that practice your vocation.

Commit to your vocation. Commit to your creativity. Do it for yourself. Do it for others. Do it for our society that so desperately needs people right now who care about more than making a buck in a corrupt, late-stage capitalist Hunger Games [nod to Suzanne Collins for her brilliant series] and instead care about humanity, democracy, community, ethics, and love.

Journal Prompt

Reflect on all the types of work you engage with on a regular basis. What activities are your hobbies? How do these hobbies benefit your life? What work is your profession? Is it something you do for both money and inner satisfaction? Do you have a vocation? What makes that work feel different from professional tasks and/or your hobbies?

Fiction: Tree Bar Encounter from The Peony Hotel

[Here is an excerpt from a scene I wrote for the Guam book, The Peony Hotel. These sections are not being written in order. Right now I’m just writing them as they come to me. This is only part of the scene. I’ll send the second half next month. S.]

“You never call. You never write. I’m beginning to think you don’t really like me.” The smooth, deep voice behind her held more than a trace of humor.

Stephanie twisted in her chair. A tall man wearing shorts and a tropical shirt looked down at her. “May I?” he asked, pointing at the chair opposite her.

She turned around again and lifted her sweating cocktail. “I appreciate the effort, I really do, but I’m perfectly content to drink alone.”

And why wouldn’t she be? She was sitting at a prime corner table on the outdoor terrace of the Guam Hilton’s Tree Bar getting a little buzz off rum and guava juice. It was happy hour, not yet prime sunset time but getting there, the cloud-dotted sky tinged with the barest hint of pink.

The Hilton draped the hill overlooking Gov. Joseph Flores Beach Park. The bar terrace hung like the deck of a ship near the water. Below it, the sand of Ypao Beach rimmed the emerald grass of the park. Tourists snorkeled in the shallow, aquamarine water. A skyline of resort hotels bristled along the gentle curve of Tumon Bay all the way to the steep, distant cliff of Two Lovers Point.

The man laughed and pulled out the chair opposite her. “You don’t remember me?”

She stared at him. “You’re blocking my view.”

He stood and shifted the chair around to her right and sat down again. “Better?”

“The table over there would be preferable.” She hitched her head sideways before slanting a glance at him. Tan legs. Expensive-looking watch. No ring on his finger. Handsome and about her age.

He leaned forward. “You really don’t remember me? United 201 out of Honolulu? Warm nuts, cold champagne, and the charming gentleman in the pod across the aisle?”

“United . . .” She blinked. “Oh!”

“Forgot all about me, then. Good. Good to know how unmemorable I am even under ideal circumstances.” He lifted his hand to signal for the server.

“The flight. That’s right! Sorry. I, uh . . . ”

“Forgot. Like I said.”

The server, a pretty young Chamorro woman, glided to the table.

The man smiled. “Hafa adai. Please bring two more of whatever she’s drinking and a menu. Thank you so much.” When the server walked away, Stephanie’s companion leaned back in his chair. “What are you drinking, anyway?”

“A concoction called Guava Love Potion.”

“Will I like it?”

“You know what I like? Drinking alone.”

“That’s not what you said on the plane.”

Stephanie lifted her love potion to her lips and took two big gulps. She remembered him now, of course. His pod had been across the aisle and slightly ahead of hers, and as the people in coach boarded, shuffled, shushed their crying babies, and shoved carryons into limited overhead space, up in first class they’d been served cold champagne and warm nuts served in tiny, thick ceramic bowls. He’d fumbled with his sports jacket, computer bag, and cell phone, dropping the device into the aisle. When he bent to pick it up, he’d glanced back and caught her watching him.

. . . to be continued.

What I’m Reading

Fiction:

LOVE & LOBSTERS by Shannon M. Parker. Set on a remote Maine peninsula, a romance about a woman lobster fisherman and the guest in her lighthouse rental. Lots of dreamy descriptions of the Maine scenery. A unique point of view from the main character shared in pithy metaphors. A fun best friend. A quiet, small-town romance that feels like a Netflix holiday movie. This is my wake-up-have-coffee book. Not exactly a page-turner, but nice.

THE FIREMAN by Joe Hill. Set in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. A pandemic, but not our pandemic, novel of many pages. Hill writes a lot like his dad, Stephen King. He’s making a passive-type character into a heroine, and that takes some real skill. Believe it or not this is my before-bed book, mostly because I need something that compelling to keep my eyes open. Definitely a page-turner.

Non-Fiction:

MARILYN: The Classic by Norman Mailer. Written by Norman Mailer, this biography is also a pictorial biography with photos by many excellent photographers. Researching Marilyn Monroe has become a hobby of mine, with an eye toward a future project, of course. I find Mailer a bit challenging, to be honest. For my Gilmore Girls fans, do you remember the “Norman Mailer, I’m Pregnant” episode? Yeah, that's the author of this book. A good one to dip into here and there. Vintage coffee table book does double-duty as decor.

Magazines

The Atlantic Monthly, print edition. Happy to discover this at my local library. One of my favorite memories of high school is going to the Bangor Public Library to borrow copies of Seventeen Magazine. Now I’m enjoying catching up on the last two months of the Atlantic. Great article by David Brooks in the May 2026 issue about progressive versus traditionalist. It got me thinking about my hard-nosed stance on tech and advancement in science and media. It reinforced my feelings that we’ve lost our way in our individualism, and I totally agree with his ideas about teaching the humanities again.

Writing Update

Since returning to Maine I’ve been writing articles for the local newspaper again and loving it. It’s fun to get back into the community, interview people, highlight bookish news, and though I can’t say it was fun to cover a meeting for the town selectmen and the DEP over an environmental issue, it was good to flex those journalistic muscles a bit.

I’ve done a little, not much, on Liv 3. Having trouble with motivation for this one, plus I’m kind of stuck on part of the mystery. Hoping to get back to it this week once this letter is finished.

Heard back from a short story contest and did not advance to the final list. Bummer.

Will be speaking via Zoom with a mystery book club in Georgia in early August about Final Draft and the Olivia Lively series!

That’s It For Now

That’s all the news for now. I hope this finds you happy, healthy, and overflowing with creativity. Thank you, as always, for reading and for supporting my writing efforts. And just one more thing . . .

Pink Dandy Reader Opportunity: I’ve just ordered some special Olivia Lively bookplates, only 50 available, and I’m happy to sign one personalized to you. Just let me know by replying to this letter, and we’ll figure out a way for me to get one to you.

I’m still working on a bookmark. Keep watching here for when they are available.

XOXO, Shelley