Doing What You Love to Do...or maybe just liking it!

In case anyone has been locked in a magical castle away from the world we live in or perhaps you live in Washington DC, the economy still sucks!  Things don't seem to be getting better.  I know people who have been out of work after being laid off from a major corporation for a year.  My husband was one of them.  After almost a year to the day of being laid off he took a job.

Don't get me wrong, he's enjoying it.  He now goes into an office after working from home for 10 years.  The adjustment to getting up at 6am every morning has taken its toll but he thoroughly enjoys working with people.  Is it his dream job? No, but it gets him back out into the workplace. Suddenly my thoroughly depressed husband is now a more energetic and very busy guy.

So where was this energy when he should have been exploring new paths and deciding what he wanted to pursue rather than having to take the first job offered?  Well, readers, men are wired differently.  I know every self-help book out there talks about that but I was not a full believer that Men are from Mars.  Often in my relationship with Andy, he's taken on a more feminine point view on things.  He was raised with women.  I was raised with men.  He cries at movies.  I pass out the tissues.  My husband is all man for sure but I thought he was raised on Venus.

Until the layoff.  Like a lion who's instinct is to hunt, my husbands instinct came through.  He was supposed to be the hunter of the family.  When I asked him what he wanted to do the only clear answer I got was to make enough money so that I didn't have to work.  What????

We have no children.  I have never expressed that I didn't want to work.  But in his head he had the measure of success as being that I don't have to work. During this last year of unemployment I joked that I was his "Sugar Mama" but didn't realize how deeply he felt a certain amount of failure for a) not earning more money than me and b) not being in a situation that I could sit all day eating bon bons. 

I looked at his layoff as being an opportunity for him. I would love to have six months to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up...if I ever grew up.  I would be looking  forward to what is to come.  He saw his layoff as his own personal failure.  He spent hours evaluating what happened and what he should have done differently. He couldn't get his arms around changing thought process and making this into a positive.  The words coming out of his mouth would say something like, "Oh I'm glad I'm the one laid off instead of the one staying and doing the work of five," but then he would agonize over what he did wrong.

Now that he's back at work, he's down on himself that it is not a high level job.  What does "finding yourself" mean to you?  Ideally, you want to do something you love and get paid a lot of money for it but if we are honest with ourselves, that seldom happens.  Do you want a job doing what you love and not make the big bucks or do you want a job with a great salary doing something "ok"?

As life is not that cut and dry the answer depends on your circumstances.  So today we have jobs that we like but we're still on the lookout for that one that you can be passionate about.

PS I miss my husband being home with me!