A job is a job

A manager once asked me, in that bright expectant tone, whether I just loved this job. I smirked and said something polite. What I thought was: a job is a job.

I do my work well. I have for a long time, in roles I loved and roles I tolerated, and the quality never depended on which one it was. Somewhere we picked up the idea that good work requires devotion. I haven’t found that to be true. Some of my best work happened in jobs I felt nothing for. They paid for a life I actually wanted, and that seemed like a fair arrangement.

I turned a passion into income once. Web design, back when I did it for friends because it was fun. Then came the unpaid invoices and the clients who changed their minds weekly. The revisions kept coming after the joy wore off. The work was still good. I just stopped believing joy was the fuel.

So when the question comes, and it has more than once, my honest answer is that I don’t think it’s the right question. I care about doing work well. I care about what it makes possible outside of it. Whether I love a job on a Tuesday afternoon seems beside the point.