Loftwings and Demons

While I certainly don't enjoy every moment of my work, it is something I overall enjoy doing and I just wish our society weren't so dysfunctional when it comes to work. In a better society I would absolutely do this kind of thing for free, because for me it's not about the money or prestige, but about helping people, and because I just like doing the work.

In our current society, I would never ever say anything to an employer that implies the money isn't important, though. I'll say that I love doing the job (true), that I'm good at it (also true), but if an employer is not going to pay me enough, I don't want to give them any reason to believe I'll do it for them.

I think it's important to be positive and polite but firm when it comes to employers. Don't bluff and say you'll refuse an offer you might not, but if they offer an amount that's lower than you feel comfortable with, express indecision. Tell them the position sounds great but you're not sure if you'll be able to accept the offer due to the pay. And if you know an offer is too low, it will save everyone time if you mention this right away, even if it cuts the interview process short.  Time is valuable, and you will be better off spending it interviewing with places who will pay you an amount you can afford to live on.  This should ideally be one of the questions asked early in the interview process, as employers are less likely to change your pay after an offer has been made, and trying to negotiate that after the offer is made could potentially jeopardize the offer itself. Probably best to ask what you'd be doing first, but after that, ask what the pay for your position is.

Of course this advice isn't necessarily very useful to people who don't need money, but I think the majority of people very much do need money. I think trying to do a job you hate for the money alone is a recipe for disaster, but thinking the money is not important just because you enjoy the type of work offered can be equally bad. The first because it depends on a degree of willpower and indifference I don't think actually exists (and to the extent it does will likely lead to great regret down the line), and the second because almost everyone does actually need the money.

There was a time in my life where I greatly overprioritized work and it eventually led to a complete emotional breakdown because it forced me to ignore handling any problems in my personal life (how was I going to work those out when I spent most my waking moments thinking about and trying to fix Work Problems lol) and eventually even led to a vast degradation in the quality of my work itself since all the problems in my personal life that were piling up were causing me...emotional distress, to say the least.  And having to work all the time was causing that too.

Eventually, I realized that my focus was not sustainable (sadly only because it was impacting the very thing I was focusing so hard on, but still). And I made the decision to [redacted].  Which allowed me the space to start addressing those personal issues.  I wouldn't say that me addressing my personal problems fixed all of those completely and made my life some happy utopia, but it did constitute a *significant* improvement, and made me realize how easy it is in our modern world to neglect vastly more important problems in order to address vastly more urgent problems.