By When I was younger, I used to hear the adage “Do what you love, love what you do,” but I don’t remember knowing too many people who loved what they did for a living. I don’t remember a single adult in my life as a child who didn’t spend more time complaining about the day job and trying to get away from their day job than they did talking pleasantly about coworkers or the actual work.
I was also led to believe that no one “normal” can make ends meet as a creative. All the musicians I knew had day jobs. The only writers I knew of were those lucky ones who escaped the day job by sheer talent and perfect time/place. Art was something for personal satisfaction, not something you could expect to make a living at.
I don’t think I set out to find a job that I loved as much as I do the technical writer career I sort of backed into by accident over twenty years ago, but here I am. It is so satisfying to know every day that I get to do something that I am remarkably good at, something that I love, something that allows me to impact not just the company’s end users, but the actual development of the product and how it is presented to those users.
That isn’t to say that there isn’t stress, or that I don’t have days where I just…don’t want to…but even on those days I still love what I’m doing.
I get to solve puzzles, troubleshoot software, wrestle with words and constantly refine language and it’s use one our product and in our online help. It isn’t something I’d thought I’d be doing when I left high school, but I feel it is exactly where I was meant to end up.
Happy Wednesday, Readers! I have so much to do, both for the day job and for the moving work. Tomorrow it’s a half-day’s work, and then I’m off to start the job of hauling my belongings from one place to the other. Take care of you and those around you. Be kind and be happy.
Photo by Christopher Beloch on Unsplash
Natalie J Case 