Dear Nekoshema:

You wrote: “something i’m excited to do for 40+ years is what i hope for”- I wonder if this is anyone’s reality, being excited to do a particular (paying) job for over forty years. I mean, is there anyone who claims to have been excited about a job for over forty years, and being honest about it? I don’t know.

Regarding you being friendly in your own way, which is what I suggested and still am suggesting, “to say something sarcastic to you and give a crooked smile” is not being friendly. Think of your own way of being friendly, if you will…?

Here is one quote from Sylvia Plath’s (The author of The Bell Jar) many writings: “Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.”-

I am thinking: she may have been an all-or-nothing person, as severely anxious/ depressed people often are. It was either everything or nothing. This quote from The Unabridged Journals: “I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad” causes me to further think so.

“Wanting nothing” and “passive and sad” was part of her experience when she attempted suicide, finally to complete. If only she was okay with being in the middle.

This is making me think that the expectation of being excited about a job for forty years is in that “wanting everything” category as well as figuring that the only friendly disposition acceptable at your job is that you see practiced by others, that is, a very friendly behavior.

Maybe not as friendly as that other employee behaves but not as unfriendly assaying something sarcastic and giving a crooked smile will be that middle, and if authentic, that would satisfy you and the employers.

anita