In March 2020, companies across the US abruptly shuttered their offices and instructed employees to work from home indefinitely as a result of the pandemic. At first, many thought the shutdowns would last a couple months. But one year later, millions of workers are still working remotely. The pandemic has forced a large segment of the global workforce to go through a remote-work experiment on a scale never seen before -- and a lot has changed in the last 12 months. The boundary between our work and our personal lives has become blurred. Working at the kitchen table has become common and, for parents, juggling virtual school while trying to hit work deadlines has become a daily challenge.

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.ȁ

Some of this is only becoming more obvious, including to myself, in an era when stable, full-time employment is evaporating, and holding on to any job is its own kind of feat. The Economic Policy Institute calculates that the failed political response to the pandemic has left nearly 16 percent of the workforce—26.8 million people—unemployed or employed but losing hours and pay. And having work isn’t necessarily a guarantee against hardship—even before the current recession, one in nine workers received wages too low to get out of poverty, even if they worked full-time hours. But the idea of a dream job is still catnip. There’s a slew of self-help articles advertising tips on how to Land Your ream Job by the End of the Year or 9 Genuine Steps to Quit Your Job and ulfill Your ream. Indeed.com lists info for 25 dream jobs, three-quarters of which have an average national salary of less than $50,000 per year.