How should we treat the job that we do to earn a living?

* Should it be something that we like doing and make it into a living?
* Should it be something quite different from what we really like doing, because making a hobby into a job may not be a bright idea?
* Is it simply the means to a lifestyle we aspire to, regardless of what we think or feel about it? Therefore we grin and bear the drudgery?
* Do we let it take over our lives and lifestyle?

Sometimes I wonder if it is good, at all, to have the option of looking upon earning a living as anything except just that. The possibility that it can be something more can be the cause of immense confusion and anguish.

And yet, aren't we the generation that looked at our fathers with adolescent sneer on learning that they spent 27 years in the same office?

Sometimes, it so happens that I am agonising over what I would tell a particular person. The circumstances are different, but the anxiety and trouble I go through - over what I would say, how I would say it and what effect it would have - are comparable. I phrase and re-phrase sentences in my mind, think of all the possible ways in which I could meet the person, run imagined conversations in my mind and work myself up.
And then, when I have said what I have wanted to say - and sometimes even before I have said anything at all - there is an abrupt response from the other side; a response that may not be particularly rude, but one that completely rips apart my efforts in one short, swift, apparently thoughtless stroke.
It can perhaps be compared to a page-long letter, written in my best hand, on the most carefully selected paper, with the right colour of ink getting a one word reply on SMS.
So, was all that anxiety and agony not required or was it not worth it?