"I love my job, I love my job, I love my job!"

I have an associate broker that works in the same office with me. She is always chanting "I love my job, I love my job, I love my job!" She's usually being sarcastic. She's our REO manager and is currently working from can to can't.

The thing is, she really does love her job (except all that awful paperwork!). One night I was sitting around at Bayfest (weekend music festival) with some friends and we were counting the jobs I had before real estate.  We counted 35 jobs, and I'm pretty sure we missed a few. I had never been fired, but I had quit 35 jobs for one reason or another. I found most jobs were boring. 9-5 never worked well with my family life. 3-11 didn't either.

Then I got my real estate license. I worked part time for the first two years. Then for 12 of the past 14 years I have worked 50-60 hours, 7 days a week, most weeks. I must love my job. I don't always think about it that much. I just do it. I opened a company 8 years ago with the above mentioned associate broker. I now have 15 agents and the work never ends, but I really do love my job.

I went to the beach recently with a friend of mine that has worked at the same bank for the past 35 years. She makes very good money. She has very good benefits and a great retirement plan. She works 9-5 five days a week and gets paid holidays and vacation! How cool is that?! After the past 12 months that sounds like heaven to me.

Then we started talking. She hates her job. She says it's boring and what she does is no benefit to anyone, any time. She has no job satisfaction. She's afraid to give up her security, but she just endures her days at work. Even if the money is good, can you imagine doing something your hate for 35 years! How awful!

Sometimes I am very well paid, sometimes I am not paid at all, sometimes I pay for the honor of being an owner/broker/Realtor. But at least I love what I'm doing (except all that awful paperwork!). I'm helping people. There is a lot of satisfaction involved. And it works well with my family life. Actually most of my family now works with me! That REO manager in the first paragraph is my sister-in-law. She got her license so she could come work part time with me and still have time for tennis. We laugh about that part time idea now and she doesn't play much tennis. Instead she works very hard to keep all her REO balls in the air, while chanting, "I love my job, I love my job, I love my job?"