How's work?

Of late I have run across a lot of people at various states of disenchantment and disgruntlement with their jobs. The reasons have been many right from never wanting to do what they find themselves doing, to not feeling challenged enough, to being unhappy with the respect they are getting, to simply wishing they would be doing something more instrumental to the end product their job is producing. When we are growing up most of us run through different phases when depending of who we might have met recently or what our impressionable minds tend to absorb from the different media sources feed us about what exactly we want to do when we grow up. Pilots and joining the army seem like popular options for guys while girls more often than not swear by doctors, nurses and movie stars. As we grow up things however fall into perspective and we don't see India clamoring up with a billion pilots or movie stars. Our career paths are charted as we go through school and we get into our jobs with a certain set of expectations, slightly hesitant knowing that this might very well be what we will be doing for the rest of our lives. We wish to be instrumental tools doing something significant at work and bringing about significant changes. I think that's when most of us hit a real roadblock when we find out that initially we are just a small fish in a big ocean where most big decisions are already made for us. Some of us struggle for respect stemming from our lack of experience while other get disenchanted finding out that what they are meant to be doing is quite different from what they had envisioned they would be doing. This post is exactly about all those people who are at these stages in their nascent career. The problem is not with asking the world of their jobs but the problem lies with expecting everything. We need to realize that not all of us work dream jobs or not at dream salaries or not at dream work hours anyways. We have to realistically lower our expectations slightly of course never to an extent where it starts interfering with your ambitions. All I am saying is that not all of us wake up everyday wanting to go to our jobs, all of us have moments when in the middle of a board room discussion or conference call we just think that what the hell are we doing at this time and place, all of us have times when we get frustrated with trying to meet crazy deadlines built of unreasonable expectations. But the key is to see if there are any moments of magic when you realize how much more fortunate to doing something you have studied to be doing, or moments when you feel a rush hearing a new idea or at a new brain wave at something you want to do based on your own acquired skills, or any other moments of magic when you think to yourself that Wow do I love my job because it is moments like these which will make you realize whether your job is really worth it. If not wait till pay day to see if it is ;)