I saw a comment here a bit farther down about how drawing your happiness from your work life was a recipe for unhappiness. While that's true (barring the except

I saw a comment here a bit farther down about how drawing your happiness from your work life was a recipe for unhappiness. While that's true (barring the exceptional job that one genuinely loves in all respects), there's a valuable distinction between drawing your happiness from your work life and letting your work life consistently make you unhappy. It's also valuable to be open to "boring" jobs -- that is, jobs that don't sound on paper like they'd be exciting -- as they might turn out to actually be jobs that do make you happy for reasons beyond the specifics of the position: a good "work culture" counts for a lot of happiness, even if what you're doing isn't something that's going to wow people at parties. My favorite jobs have ended up being at companies that probably don't sound particularly exciting -- a database company, a group making an underrated virtual assistant. Conversely, some jobs that I've had at ostensibly more exciting places, like an early virtual world company and an aerospace company, were kind of train wrecks. (The latter was at least as much my fault, as I was sufficiently enamored with the idea of working for them that I didn't admit I was absolutely not right for the job even though I picked up on it early.)