Gaff tape and eyelash glue

I’m excited about the September edition of “The 360,” our monthly deep dive into a single subject. In this issue, the topic is work—trends in and the theology of—including an essay by David Bahnsen. An economist and weekly WORLD Radio contributor—and as of Aug. 9, New York Stock Exchange opening bell ringer—Bahnsen explains how work saved his life. He also asks whether Christians might profit from a more robust view of vocation.

I’ve always been fascinated with work, not least because I suspect I am endemically lazy and therefore am constantly inventing new ways to be the Six Million Dollar Man: better, stronger, faster. As a writer, I also suspect I’m not alone.

A writer’s day at work: You close all the doors to your office, spin around three times, whisper a prayer while secretly thinking about the laundry, then put on your lucky headphones with the soothing rain sounds and let the creativity flow until you realize your desk drawers urgently need rearranging. When that’s done, you check all your messaging platforms to be sure you haven’t overlooked a text or email or any other possible reason not to actually start writing and, finding none, you finally lay hands on the keyboard, hoping that Serious Art, or at least cohesive language, appears on the screen via some mysterious alchemy you’ve tapped before but are certain is a dry well now, and why oh why did you ever sign this contract, and you’ll never again write anything worth reading, and the cherry on top is, now everyone will know you’ve been faking it all these years.

And then it’s Tuesday.

Journalist-turned-screenwriter Gene Fowler famously said, “Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” Selah.

I have a lot of Christian friends and family who take their vocational callings very seriously and are filling and subduing the earth in more interesting and less neurotic ways than I: a wealth manager; a Washington, D.C., Metro engineer; multiple brilliant attorneys, professors, and stay-at-home moms; a Nashville police officer; a personal historian, a former wrangler of scientists who now captains his own charter yacht.

One friend, an engineer, is working on a project so top secret that its team meets only in a secure facility and only in person, even though that means flying several people thousands of miles for a one-hour meeting in order to avoid all (potentially hackable) electronic communications. My friend can’t tell anyone, even his wife, what he’s working on, only that it may someday save the world.

As intriguing as his job is on an existential scale, my writing partner’s day job is a rare peek behind the Hollywood curtain. Sara Vladic, with whom I wrote Indianapolis (Simon and Schuster 2018), is a screenwriter and television producer. She’s written for shows like Running Wild With Bear Grylls and films such as The Sixth Sense and produced segments for Discovery and National Geographic. Sara also produces a lot of live television, particularly award shows, which is apparently like herding cats down a beach. I enjoy her stories about hosts like Jack Black (joyful and fun-loving), Mark Wahlberg (respectful, but full-macho at all times), and Adam Sandler (the humble Jewish kid who still can’t believe he’s famous). Sara says it’s a lot of fun to dump green slime on them all at the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards.

Sara and I are in Spain right now, using the time-zone advantage to work on our respective books while our U.S. colleagues sleep. Everything I know about traveling, I’ve learned from Sara. As a producer who might find herself in a sand-whipped desert on one shoot and in a blizzard on the next, she has learned to be prepared. On this trip alone, we have made prodigious use of her magic go-bag, which includes a battery-powered stick-up light, clothesline on a retractable spool, a mini-fan, a pop-up clothes hamper, an inflatable foot stool, a tape measure, a 20-ounce battery-powered blender, and a water filter so powerful it can make even aquarium water potable. (Not that you’d want to try.)

At various times in Sara’s career, her film-set go-bag has included eyelash glue (for the celebrity diva who insisted on peeling off her fake eyelashes and sticking them to random objects), gaff tape (useful for everything, including extracting painful spines from a camera operator’s posterior after a cholla cactus attacked her in the desert), and that mighty water filter (because, Baltimore).

In Hollywood, Sara pursues her vocation in increasingly hostile spiritual territory. We all do, to some extent. May we each complete the work the Master has given us to do—wherever He has placed us—and let our lights shine.