My wife and I were laying by the pool over the weekend discussing the state of affairs when we started talking about our respective occupations. She said she absolutely loved her job and couldn’t imagine doing anything else. She said she was good at what she does, makes a difference in people’s lives, and is “passionate” about her occupation.
Me, on the other hand, enjoy what I do, do it well, and take some satisfaction out of it, but I’m not anywhere near “passionate.” I could just as easily sell shoes if it paid what I make now and provided the same level of benefits. I am strongly in the camp that my occupation only pays the bills and allows me to live a certain lifestyle. Other than that - it holds no special appeal.
How about you? Can you imagine yourself doing something else, if the pay was the same, or are you madly in love with your job?
I have your attitude about my job. I’m a web designer. I’m good at it, and I enjoy it, and I feel it uses my creativity a little bit. But I’d leave in a second if I could make just as much money doing something more “fun”, and I wouldn’t miss this.
I love where I work, but would rather be doing different things here. With any luck, I’ll get a chance to do some interesting artistic stuff over the next couple years in addition to the accounting.
I am passionate about my occupation. I love it. I love almost every day of it and almost every person I work with. I happily spend great amounts of time preparing for my work, even though it means having relatively little spare time for anything else. I sometimes find myself spending months anticipating certain days of work. As for switching jobs, I can only say that I’ve rejected a job offer that would have paid more than twice as much.
I’m closer to you, but I’m not altogether sure that I really am that good at what I do and I don’t enjoy it the way I think I should. I should probably reevaluate.
That’s one of the things I marvel at around the office sometimes - how some people just care so much about meeting company objectives. I mean, it’s cool if we do and all, but I just can’t care that much.
Love what I do, I can’t imagine doing something else. If I recall, you are a planner (duh-look at his name!). Could it be that it takes years for your work to be realized? I think if I had to wait 10-20 years before my designs were realized I might have a different take on my profession.
That is what I love about Architecture, within 2-3 years something I have designed is built and occupied and I can learn and move forward with my career. I also like the variety–I can meet with the GC in the morning looking at foundations in the mud, and in the afternoon talking to a client in a board room. Always something new and different. I can be creative, yet also very practical. It just fits my personality I think.
I don’t know if TV is to blame, or what, but I think people have this belief that they must be utterly fullfilled by their work of they are failing at life somehow. I try to put things on a global perspective and remind myself of just how many jobs are truly crappier than mine, and how many millions of people would like to have a job in an air-conditioned building with a comfortable chair, etc., or any job at all for that matter.
I look to my personal life for the passion and fullfillment. I’m certainly not opposed to finding work that is meaningful, but I’m not beating myself up because it hasn’t happend yet.
I’m half and half, I work in my family store and I’m studying, attempting to be some sort of academic. All things being equal I would gladly work in the family store for the rest of my natural life but it wouldn’t offer me a sustained living. The longer I spend at academic work the more disillusioned I become so I might just have to find another occupation to become passionate about.
I love what I do. Something I really, really understand how to do is make radio programs. I get paid to make exquisitely beautiful-sounding shows with transparent production values, the kind that sound so natural, you can’t tell that I’ve manipulated them to sound that way. I joke about my job being to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but it’s an accurate description. I can edit peoples’ speech to make them sound far more eloquent than they really are. I can make shows come out to an exact minute and second whether the contents run long or short before I get them.
These skills have got me a lifetime job with pension and benefits. I used to work for a living. Now I do something that comes naturally to me, and someone pays me to keep doing it. I can’t imagine going back to something else.
My occupation is my hobby, so yeah, I’m passionate and completely nuts over it: namely, historical research. Just live and breathe the stuff, day after day, 7 days a week. Certainly not complaining about being paid to do what I love to do.
Well, nothing I did in college relates in any meaningful way to my job (I studied environmental science and only worked in that field for about 6 months). I enjoy working on environmental impact statements and would love to have even a limited positive impact on our environment.
Instead I test specialized computer related doohickeys, and if I wasn’t doing this I’d probably work IT again.
So no, I’m not passionate about my occupation. I enjoy it, the money and perks are ok, I’m comfortable here, but I’m not passionate about it.
What is this “passionate” you speak of? Nah, like my job, and it pays well. But it’s not like it does anything to improve lives (other than in the sense of my being a good manager is good for both my team, and my boss) or save lives, or further science and technology, or create beautiful art for posterity, or anything else that I can consider something I’d be “passionate” about. But then again, I have no talent in any area that would make significant contributions in any of those areas. So I do my job and collect my paycheck and make my contributions in the small ways I am able in my personal life, rather than my work life.
I really like my current job, I have great coworkers, and I’m paid well. But I don’t know if I’d say I’m exactly passionate about it. It’s a great job, and I have a lot of fun at work, but it’s rather difficult to get too passionate about number crunching, especially when we’re not making the world a better place, just making some investors richer.
Perfect, this is what I would say. I enjoy my job very much, but it’s still a job. There are probably other jobs that I would feel equally enthusiastic about.
I’m closer to passionate about my workplace – it’s a great work environment. If for some reason I had to get another job, I would try very hard to find a workplace that was similar, even if the work itself was very different.
I’m passionate to the point of geeking out over the outcomes of my job, the long term outcomes, mostly. But there are still definitely huge morale ups and downs with the actual day to day work. And I could certainly imagine myself doing other things, but when it comes down to it, they’d most likely still be utilizing the same talents, just in a different field. I’m a fast learner and I like putting things into neat systems. I could do what I do, or I could probably become one of those people who organizes your closet, and be equally nuts about it.
Nah, like my job, and it pays well. But it’s not like it does anything to improve lives (other than in the sense of my being a good manager is good for both my team, and my boss) or save lives, or further science and technology, or create beautiful art for posterity, or anything else that I can consider something I’d be “passionate” about. But then again, I have no talent in any area that would make significant contributions in any of those areas. So I do my job and collect my paycheck and make my contributions in the small ways I am able in my personal life, rather than my work life.