When I was young, my dream job was to be a horse. I didn’t want to be a horse girl, but a girl who is a horse. This made sense to me back then and also now. People respect horses, whose reputation is unimpeachable. Their work often consists of clear, concise tasks, like pulling a plow from one end of a field to another or carrying a child in circles around a fenced-in ring. Their basic needs are also generally met: At the end of the day, they get fed hay and their little iron shoes get cleaned out and they sleep in a house with high ceilings.
My dream did not materialize, but as I entered the workforce, my early sense of what a dream job actually was only deepened. I wanted to do something I cared about and have my life taken care of in the process, but I always had some understanding that even the most fulfilling, best-paid job in the world would also still be work. After all, no one sees a horse pulling a cart and thinks that they aren’t laboring. Horses aren’t doing laps with fidgety nine-year-olds in their off-hours. No one says to a horse, “If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life.”
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