Do you <3 your job?

I luh-huv my job.  If you can even call it that.  I still can’t believe that I’m allowed to hang around awesome coworking people, answer the occasional question, give tours, dink around on social media and make coffee in the morning as my job description.  I am waiting for a swat force to crash through the skylight, rappel down and arrest me.  My crime: loving my job.

For years, I confused “being good at my job” with “loving my job so much that I want to take it behind the middle school and get it pregnant (channeling Tracey Jordan).”  My previous jobs have been painfully simple.  Show up, complete some boring checklist, talk people off emotional ledges, dork around for the remaining 6 hours, go home and repeat.  I did this for 8 years!  8 years! 8 years!  Those are years I’ll never get back.

Here are some warning signs that you might be just good at your job but not loving it.

1. You can get 8 hours of work done in about 90 minutes and still achieve an Oustanding on your performance review while spending the other 6.5 hours surfing the web, chatting with your coworkers and taking long lunches.  My former bosses are probably pooping themselves right now.

2. You complain about your job–A LOT.  Complaining is a symptom of desperation, sadness, depression, longing and dissatisfaction.  There are a small percentage of people who just get off on complaining.  If you’re doing it, there’s a good reason.

3. Your boss asks you to stop innovating because the company can’t keep up with all of your ideas.  Dysfunctional company aside, run for your life!

4. Every morning when your alarm clock goes off you get any one of the following symptoms: a stomach ache, vomiting, headache, tears, nashing of teeth, exhaustion, fury, a bad attitude, swearing, nausea.  Either you’re pregnant or you secretly hate your job.  Move on OR go buy a pregnancy test.

5. Work feels like work.  Run, Forrest, run.

I used to hear this all the time, “if you love your job you’ll never work another day in your life.”  I wouldn’t go that far but the mundane tasks like paying the bills, cleaning the urinal and fixing typos on stuff become much more bearable when you get to do those things around people you love in a space that makes you feel awesome.

Please, don’t learn to love your existing job.  Take a breath, take a leap and change your life.  Do you love your job and why?

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