Do you enjoy what you do for a living?

I was just wondering, because I hear a lot of talk about the disgruntled American worker and how he (or she) simply hates whatever it is he (or she) does to earn a livelihood. But I don't see a lot of evidence of that in the circles I travel. Oh, people are always griping--about their job, about the pay, about the boss, about their employees. But complaining is human nature, and when you pin them down, most people kind of enjoy working and they usually say they like what they're working at.

I do. Even though I have one of the harder jobs (I find most people think they work harder than most people), I can't think of many things I'd rather be doing. And I'd much rather be doing this than doing nothing, although my wife says it's sometimes hard to tell the difference.

One problem with the way we Americans view work is that we see some jobs as "high-status" and some as "low-status." For example, the medical profession is considered high-status kind of work, whereas digging ditches is not a particularly high-status job. But I think this way of looking at work gives us a lot of trouble and really is not very useful. I'd think an experienced ditch digger who tries to dig the best ditch possible should command more respect (and probably more money) than a bumbling quack of a doctor who doesn't pay much attention to his work. But that status thing is ingrained in the way we see different kinds of employment and is hard to shake.

I'm sure some people become trapped--or feel as if they do--in a job they don't really like. And right now, there are probably several people who genuinely want to work but cannot find a job of any kind. But most of us are in a line of work because we chose to be--or because we didn't choose to find something to do that we might have liked better.

Yep. I like what I do for a living. There are some things about it that are less pleasant than others, but if I thoroughly detested my work, I think I'd be out looking for another job. Life's too short to spend so much of it doing something that makes you miserable.

At least my job is better than being the oarsman on a slave galley when the captain wants to water-ski.