Does anyone have a job they enjoy? What do you do?

[ratdaydays]

I hate my job so much that it is making me depressed outside of work.  It is turning me into a miserable person to be around because I am constantly complaining.  I know I probably annoy my loved ones, but I just can't help it.  I really hate my job!!  (I am a pharmacist.)
Does anyone actually like their job?  I am curious about what kind of jobs happy people do.  I would like to just get some ideas because I think it's time for a career change.  I have enough savings that I don't care about the salary, but I don't have enough to retire. 

[Fishindude]

I was a contractor building industrial projects and for the most part, really enjoyed the work.
It's a good feeling watching a project come together, watching people work together for a common effort and knowing you had a hand in it.  Can drive by them decades later and still say I helped build that.

Every now and then we'd have a miserable client or the usual trivial people problems to deal with, but that's life.

[startingsmall]

I don't enjoy my current job. I'm a veterinarian, which seems to be a field that has a whole lot in common with retail pharmacy... so I suspect that we're feeling similar pain if you're in retail.

I did once have a job that I loved -- teaching test prep classes for The Princeton Review. I'm SERIOUSLY considering a career change to teaching... but it seems like teachers are just as prone to burnout as DVM's, so I'm not sure that's such a great idea. My degree of work-related distress is becoming increasingly elevated, though, to the point that my husband just had a big sit-down with me that basically involved the options of a) make some sort of major change (even if it means quitting my current job with nothing lined up), or b) see a doctor for meds. I haven't decided yet which approach to take, but I know that he's right. I keep thinking that I can tough out the current situation for "just a little bit longer" and save up "just a little bit more money".... but his concerns about whether I can survive "a little bit" probably are not unjustified.

I also enjoy my side hustle, doing veterinary/medical writing. I've been trying to find a work-from-home full-time medical writing position for the last year or so, but those seem to be few and far between. I keep applying, though.

[Rhoon]

Sales Engineer. I used to love it; but hate my current company. No sense of accomplishment; more of a paperwork pusher now. I like to be out meeting customers, helping to close deals and see all the cool things other agencies are doing.

But I do join the others here in stating I hate my current job even though I'm extremely well paid; looking to make a major change -- probably in the company rather than the job description. I however, don't have $250K+ Wrapped up in my education, so even if I did shift to a whole new career entirely, it's not such a huge hit.

[Ellen]

I teach high school. There are many things I do like about it--my content area, most teenagers, exercising creativity, the feeling that I'm contributing to a better society (whether or not I am ;) There are also things I don't like--waking up at 5 a.m., too many meetings, weekends spent grading, occasionally feeling blamed for societal ills and students' bad choices.

Did you happen to see the /r/financialindependence subreddit with threads by an early-retired pharmacist? It might not make you feel better about your job but it might help you to know that you aren't the only one. Thanks for including the full link below!

[Rhoon]

Here's the full link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/7a3m3z/five_months_into_early_retirement/

[4n6]

I really like my job. I am a college professor. For me, I feel at home on a college campus and I hope to continue teaching as long as I can (although maybe not full-time). PLus I get to travel on the university's dime. Works for me.

[koshtra]

I work half time as a database admin for a nonprofit, and half time as a massage therapist, and I love both my jobs.

If I did either one of them full time, I might come to dislike them. Probably would.

I basically pick my own hours, and control my whole work flow, in both of them, which has a huge amount to do with how happy they make me. I've never had a full time job that made me happy -- in fact, until this phase of my life (going on about ten years now) I had never been happy with work, and I didn't know that I could be. I thought maybe I was just a thoroughgoing hopeless malcontent.

They're neither of them high-paying or high-prestige: but they pay handsomely in appreciation.

[Kwill]

I really like my job. I am a college professor. For me, I feel at home on a college campus and I hope to continue teaching as long as I can (although maybe not full-time). PLus I get to travel on the university's dime. Works for me.

I didn't like teaching college, but I really like my job as an academic librarian / area specialist curator. Same environment but less public speaking. I think this goes back to the idea that what is great for one person isn't necessarily going to be the best fit for someone else.

[kamille]

Remember the reason you pursued your career and focus on that. If you are still unhappy, maybe it is just the place and people you work with and not your actual job. Try to find things you enjoy about your job instead of letting the negatives drown everything out. I love my job because I make a meaningful impact for my patients and their families, I love my coworkers, I have schedule flexibility, I make pretty good pay and benefits, and am actively involved in improvement projects.

[sixup]

I'm enjoying my job now for the first time in my life (I'm 28).

I am doing software development for a small tech company that creates wellness/fitness tools.

It's great because it's a 35 minute bike commute to work, flexible hours, small team that works well together, and I work fairly autonomously with very little process. I enjoy that there's little-no bureaucracy and the stuff I create gets used by real people, hopefully helping them in some way.

[middo]

I'm a high school teacher (maths) and I love most of my job. I love my subject area, I love teaching most of the kids, even the really weak ones, and I love the variety I get.

What I don't love is the petty office politics you get in most organisations.  And the teachers who assume they can treat other members of staff as students.  But they get told occasiinally.

Oh, and I love the holidays.  And long service leave. I will work less weeks this year than I do not work. :)

[zolotiyeruki]

I like my job!  I call myself a "technical engineer," because that's about as specific as I can get and still describe what I'm doing.  I'm an EE by education, and I work for a small startup, doing everything from database administration to electronics design to firmware development to web administration to 3d modelling for some of our projects.  I would say that there are a few things that contribute to my enjoyment: 1) the variety of work, so I don't get burned out, 2) proximity to home, 3) I'm paid ok, and 4) it's challenging and rewarding (look at this thing that I designed!).

When it comes to being happy, I think it has more to do with attitude than circumstances.  Happy people don't necessarily fall into certain types of professions.  Several years ago, I learned a really good lesson: "What you pay attention to, grows."  If you focus on the negative stuff and complain about it, it'll become easier to find more negative things to complain about.  If instead you take time to recognize positive things that happen, and make it a habit, you'll find it easier to recognize those things.

[slappy]

Today's ChooseFI podcast featured the Happy Philosopher, who was also unhappy as a physician. I believe he was also on the Mad Fientist podacst a while back. Maybe check out those episodes for some additional insight.  I'm only about 20 minutes in, but so far he has been talking about how he worked on making himself happy even though he hated his job.

[brute]

I'm a data scientist, and it's legendary. Sure, there are weeks that suck, long meetings sometimes, that sort of thing. But when I actually get to do my job, dive into petabytes of data, find patterns, find knowledge, create and train machine learning algorithms, that's the life. There's nothing I'd rather be doing. Except for everything else.