There is a colleague at my store who works part-time. He has been there for years, but he also works another job as an aircraft detailer at Dulles International, balancing the two positions every week and sharing different stories about his airline adventures.

One day, as he was clocking out of his shift at the store, I asked if he was in again the next day. He answered no, explaining that he had a full schedule at his “real job” that week.

That really bothered me, and it still bothers me to this day as I continue my ongoing career pilgrimage.

After all, what is a real job if not the performing of a specific line of duties or services in exchange for income?

My best friend Kevin–who passed away very unexpectedly at the beginning of 2022–was a fan of Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe, who speaks regularly about the country’s straining relationship with work, the widening skills gap, offshore manufacturing, infrastructure decline, currency devaluation and several other topics, and how the nation needs o desperately reinvigorate the skilled trades. Kevin often reminded me, especially in the final years of his life, that a glorifying job title bore no weight in comparison to a person’s vocation in life: that whatever job I held was only a means to help carry out my eternal role as a husband and father, in providing for my wife and son.

“The world,” he said in a video he narrated and starred in for Mount Carmel Media, “especially the modern world, offers all too many artificial substitutes for the light of God. Money, status, impulse shopping, social media… all those are things like flood lights. You flip a switch and have instant security and comfort, but you’re blinded to the beautiful celestial tapestry above you, to the light of God’s action in your life.”

The only “not real” or “fake” jobs out there are unemployment and those that inflict deliberate, excruciating harm on society (i.e. human trafficking and illegal drug dealing). Whether you are trying to educate wine shoppers, vacuuming every class section of an airplane, painting houses, leading a department store, executing marketing strategies, creating works of art or delivering goods as a DoorDasher, always maintain your dignity by pursuing to be the very best at it. But no matter what you are doing to earn a living, never lose sight of how to invest that income: the health and security of yourself and your loved ones, and the pursuit of the good in your community.

Some further reading: To the People Who’ve Been Told To “Get A Real Job”