When Your Profession is On Fire

So how do we keep doing all this passion work that needs doing? How do educate, and make art, and create spaces to enjoy it? How do we comfort the infirm, and protect the vulnerable, and agitate for a better world? We can agree that the outcome of this type of work is valuable and venerable. It is essential . But the we value the people doing the w... See more

The Passion Job Burnout Machine is different than the burnout machines of, say, Big Law, or investment banking. With those jobs, you know who’s burning you out and why. It’s a very transparent trial by fire: a means to see if you can hack it with a very time-greedy job (that rewards you with very high pay). Passion jobs let you do the dirty work yo... See more

When an industry fails to address the societal and structural factors that make this type of work harder, and rely on workers’ passion to power the whole industry through a snowballing crisis....in those cases, not even a strong union can protect the worker from the burnout built into the system. You go beyond burnout to demoralization, which is th... See more