Are you doing what you love?

[megimoo]

I would say Yes and No. I work in an area that has a direct and sometimes dramatic impact on human, animal, and plant life in my region. I have seen pollution reduction levels that are frankly astonishing (and never reported in the media). These reductions are a direct result of my group's work on modeling and monitoring over time. We do the science and make the cases that force politicians to support sensible efforts to curb or monitor vehicle emissions, open burning, wildfires, and point source contributors. That's pretty amazing and satisfying.

At the same time, there was never a time when I was 10 years old and said to myself that I wanted to grow up and do QA on continuous ozone monitors or pitch independent lab costs on particulate samples.

I am not my career. I basically got into chemistry in order to blow things up or poison things. Neither option is allowed in my workplace. :(


:D

Most of the engineering people I've worked with have a history of bomb building .One destroyed his family's boathouse with a home made fuel/air bomb.Another designed rocket bursting changes and by extention got into the field of high altitude pyrotechnics displays.The fascination with explosions is rather overpowering for the junion scientist.My interest in bursting changes grew out of a fascination with catalytic chemical reactions and rocket propulsion .One of my displays disturbed the peace and tranquility of several nearby towns well past the midnight hour .In my youth I had a fondness for delayed explosions late at night that would wake the whole town and cast suspicions on several of us.If I were young today I would no doubt be locked up as a terrorist bomb builder.I never got into the torture of dismemberment of small animals .

[RobJohnson]

I love what I do.

[FlaGator]

What languages are you proficient in or what do you write in most often.I have much the same background learning programming as an expedient to hardware design.

I program in C, C++, C#, Java, 8086 Assembler and various flavors of SQL. The core of my job use to be data modeling and database management/data processing but lately I've returned to my roots and have been doing systems level programming as well as GUI design and construction. I also do web design using html, php and javascript. A web site that I designed and maintain is www.stpetersjax.org (my sig is messed up but this will take you to the real site). I have become a fan of C# and Visual Studio over the last year and a half. We have written 3 applications at Bank of America using C# and the development went very quickly.

[linda22003]

Actually, no. I am in it for the money! Production is what counts, the more the moneyier. (Linda #s is that a word?)

I think you "coined" the term. :p Oh, I crack myself up sometimes.

[marinejcksn]

I love what I do. Well, I'm in Logistics and Embarkation so I don't always love what I do. During unit moves when I'm doing embarkation, building pallets and loading gear into aircraft & on the ships I'm happy as a pig in slop. The rest of the time, when I'm doing logistics, requesting vehicle support and chow and all the other garbage my unit thinks it needs, I'm not too happy. :p

But I'm moving up quickly in rank, (E-5 looking at E-6 by my 7 year mark) so gradually I'll put up with less and less bs, so that's always good! :D

[FlaGator]

This is interesting. Most of them seem to enjoy what we do for a living. I wonder (and I suspect I know the answer) what the responses would be if this question was posted on DU. Maybe this is a fundamental difference between libs and conservatives. They hate what they do or working in general, so they get wrapped up in intangibles in order to gain some sense of involvement and accomplishment.

[Space Gravy]

I like what I do. Love is too strong a word for me. I can't really think of anything I'd "love" to do.

[BadCat]

I design and build computer systems that kill people.

OF COURSE I LOVE IT!

[M21]

I don't love what I do but I recognize that it is essential to many other people and is important in the big scheme of things so there is a great job satisfaction. I'm doing something now that is important for my country.

I intend to be doing what I love in a year or two after my third retirement. That will be teaching downhill skiing in the winter and whitewater kayaking in the summer.

[megimoo]

I think you "coined" the term. :p Oh, I crack myself up sometimes.

It doesn't take much !