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Today I was thinking that, in my whole entire life, I have not had more than one or two jobs that I actually liked. My husband, on the other hand is an entertainer and loves his job more than anything in the world (except me), and it occurred to me how nice it would be to have a job that you looked forward to going to.
I know there are people out there who love their job. I'd like to know why.
But, in my spare time, I do similar "engineering" type things, projects, hobbies, etc during my spare time for fun. Plus my engineering education has helped me to solve all sorts of problems.
Engineering is very pragmatic - the systems thinking of engineering is very beneficial. Most problems can be broken down into smaller problems, each with their own solution.
I've never had a job that I liked. All of the jobs I have had fall into the following categories:
1. Mindless and repetitive work that does not pay well.
2. Work that does pay well, but it is so stressful or energy-consuming and so utterly takes over your life that it is not worth it.
Work just....sucks. I cannot fathom these Type-A people who need a job or they would get "bored". I could sit on my ass for the rest of my life playing video games and be quite content. Unfortunately, I like money a lot though, so I need to get a good job (eventually...haha).
I think it really takes luck for someone to love their job--- its a perfect combination of the perfect company, the perfect boss, the perfect goals, and the perfect personality. An upset in any of the above and a job can go from "great" to only "tolerable". Personally, I'm very type A so I need to have goals to motivate me and to be able to control those goals. Sales is literally all about how hard you work. In addition to that, I am with a young, booming company in the tech industry that not only has growth opportunities but also encourages me to keep up with the times. Finally, my boss is a guy that truly cares for his team and will do whatever it takes to make sure his team succeeds.
I'm an orthopedic surgeon and I absolutely love my job.
I get to use power tools and a stapler. I have tremendous diversity of cases every week between my clinic, hospital consults and ER trauma work. I like my day to be busy (work 60+ hrs a week). And I like to think I contributed a small difference at the end of the day. The look of someone getting their leg back during post-traumatic reconstruction is well worth any of the BS I encountered in school and training. Even makes the 3am calls tolerable.
And $300k a year goes really far for someone whose parents made a tenth that.
Work is 1/2 your waking life. I truly believe in the saying that you have to do something you love, otherwise you'll burn out.
I love my job (Communications Analyst, will move up to Operations Analyst at the end of this month.) because I have great co-workers, management and on Fridays our boss rewards us for our excellence and hardwork by either letting us goof off the last hour or he lets us leave early, with pay. Can't beat a job like that.
I love my job and I love my company. I work in HR and payroll as an analyst. On the outset it seems pretty boring, but it is not actually. When you handle the payroll for a multi-national company for many tens of thousands of employees there is ALWAYS something to do, improve, make more efficient, etc.
I rarely get the same issue more than once. I lead a team of other analysts and it is rewarding to help them grow. My management is great, the benefits are awesome, and my pay has been very very good, as well as the opportunities for advancement, etc.
I think probably "love" is too strong of a word for most people or their expectations are simply too high. Many people might enjoy their job and they certainly don't dread going to work every day but even people who really, really, really like their job tend to not typically go in and work for free on their days off. I understand that high level executives are pretty much on the job 24/7 but at the same time there are times when they would rather be golfing or on vacation or whatever. In addition, I love horses and horseback riding, doesn't mean I want to ride and be around horses every waking second of the day especially earning peanuts. I'd rather do something I perhaps didn't like as much so that I had the money to spend on the horses during my free time.
I think it is important to find a job that you can at least enjoy. Nothing is worse than dreading work or anything every day. Most of us have to work. I'm personally glad that I didn't live 100 years ago where I literally had to work sunup to sundown just to stay fed. Workaholics are the ones that survived 100 years ago and they are the ones that excel today. We have had more free time in the last 50 years than we ever have in history, even people that have to work 60 hours a week have more free time than they did 100 years ago so it really is a matter of perspective.
Plenty of people get buy just doing mediocre work for mediocre pay but people aren't happy with that. They want to get paid the big bucks but not do the work involved. That isn't the way life works. You have to have drive and passion to make the big bucks. But enough of my rambling, I think you get my point.
I loved copyediting from home. It was a side job (contract, part-time, not reliable) and it ended after seven years. Besides it being a real skill of mine, it was superb journalism (PBS FRONTLINE website) and I loved being part of it and learning so much.
I realize that it was a special job, even for online copyediting.
I have not loved any other work, and certainly not anything that could support me.
Oh, I loved being a carpenter apprentice. And I was the worst one you ever saw and had to stop for a bad wrist at age 26. Loving something is no guarantee that you'll be any good at it, in my case, it's an inverse correlation.
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