From a story on thenation.com by Rumaan Alam headlined “Disappearing Act: The Working Life of Haruki Murakami”:

“Vocation” is a word I associate with the trades—a consequence, I think, of attending American public schools in the 1980s. There, “vocation” was deployed as a euphemism for skilled labor. The implication, as I understood it, was that to be a mechanic, a plumber, an electrician, was a calling, perhaps divine. The work that was my fate—noodling about in front of a computer—was decidedly less sanctified.