I was on a run with two friends the other day, one in medical school and one another teacher. We discussed how often we have to talk about our jobs in terms of passion and how much interviewing in our respective professions is all about talking about playing up our jobs as our lifelong passions.

Of course, passion can sometimes masquerade as an excuse to treat workers poorly and not pay them well. If a job is your passion, you’re willing to sacrifice anything for that job by definition.

This worked for me for about a couple of months of teaching, then the stress, burnout, and overall fatigue just wore on me. Life happened.

The more I thought about the “your job is your passion and you should sacrifice for it” mindset, the more I realized it was B.S.

My friend in medical school said the following to contest the pressure of your job being your passion:

“No one asks accountants if they love their jobs.”

I’d rather be complimented in dollars than words

That’s right — there’s a sense that accountants don’t necessarily love doing your taxes. They do it because they have to do it, and they’re paid for it. I’m sure that’s just a generalization — plenty of accountants might love their jobs and love doing people’s taxes. But the overwhelming perception is they don’t, and they get paid well for doing the dirty work many ordinary people don’t want to do.

I felt a lot of pressure to love my job as a teacher. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t. I do it out of a sense of duty and devotion to the kids and because I also need a job. I need an income to pay the rent, insurance bills, car payments, and you get the point.

Teaching during the pandemic has been stressful. People say, “why do teachers complain so much when they get breaks and weekends?” but the reality is no one knows what it’s like unless they’ve experienced it. The rewarding parts of the job are rewarding, but sometimes they can come far and in between.

When your job is your identity, it sets you up for a trap, especially when there are so many elements of your job outside your control. I don’t control student attendance, for example. I don’t control what happens outside the school or in the community.

The fact is our jobs don’t love us back. Passion and idealism can only carry you so far. At some point, there need to be other forms of motivation for showing up and doing a good job. I have a sense of duty. I also need to pay the bills. There needs to be something that motivates you to show up to work even on the days you really don’t feel like it.

If I don’t show up to my job, who else will teach my kids? Who else will know what accommodations and modifications each of them receives, which parent, guardian, or sibling to call when they need help filling out a job application and essential information like a social security number or birth certificate?

Who else knows what student they can’t sit next to because they got into an altercation last week, and which student needs to go to the nurse every day because they have diabetes? Who else knows the address listed in the system is wrong and where I can actually drop off a report card because the correct address has not been updated?

I’m not pretending to be a savior. All I’m saying is because my students and I have spent so much time and in close proximity, I’m the best person to serve out the year with them as their English special education teacher.

But what motivates me is not passion anymore. It’s not idealism. I just, well, do it. I serve my kids. I teach them. And then I go home and attend to everything else in my life. I felt bad for being underprepared for a lesson or not having something done before.

Now, this is just what I do. It’s what I get paid for. When push comes to shove, I love my kids. I have visited many houses to help fix wi-fi issues or teach parents how to do something on the computer. I have every phone number for a kid’s family saved so I can contact them for every accomplishment and positive act their kid does before I contact them about misbehavior.

But I just wouldn’t say it’s my passion. I wouldn’t say it’s something I’m paid for and my job. It’s nothing glamorous. It’s nothing you can make a Hollywood movie about. I’m not going to lie and say I don’t like praise and recognition — all I’m saying is the passion mentality that led me into the job failed me.

I feel like this makes me a terrible person, but now, I’d rather be complimented in dollars than words.

Passion is a limited resource

You can argue this new generation has gotten too soft. Or you can argue this generation has been sold a lie about how your job needs to be your passion. People worked hard and taxing jobs in the past, too. But were their expectations as misaligned as ours? Did they find their callings and their life purpose in their work?

It might be hard to paint every single person in a generation with a broad brush, but I find it difficult to believe an organization like teaching programs marketing themselves to idealistic college graduates who wanted to change the world existed to the same extent in the 1990s or 1980s.

Passion is a limited resource. There are times when it is useful. And there are other times when you need to take a break or rely on a motivation factor completely outside passion to move you forward.

When reality does not align with what you envisioned for your passion, you will be disappointed.

Don’t get me wrong; I still love teaching. It’s just not what I thought it was. It got a lot more complicated. There’s a lot of struggle and a lot of reward at the same time.

Right now, I want to be a boring accountant when I grow up — nothing more, nothing less. I don’t mean I actually want to be an accountant. It’s not what I went to school for.

But I am giving up, at least for supporting my daily living, on my job being my passion. I want a job that’s boring, pays the bills, one where I can leave work at work and come home to my life and family and not feel bad about it.

I don’t need to love my job. The reality is my job probably won’t love me back.