Working to Fulfillment?

When did working for survival become "doing what you love"? Was it just when we decided we weren't starving anymore or when The Man got a better marketing team?

I think I need to research the origins of the my-job-fulfills-me origin because I'm sure there was a trend and turning point. People (not slaves) were not hoeing the fields and picking the corn saying, wow, I really feel great about my job! In fact, people couldn't have been blacksmith-ing and kilning pots because they loved to be hot and dirty all day.

Our ancestors did what they were good at, what they had a penchant to do. Well, they performed those jobs even if they didn't. If papa was a fisherman, then, well, junior, you better not get seasick. Some little girls never picked up the knack of sewing but like it or not, milking the cows was just going to have to be good enough for her.

On the other hand, they may have felt great about it since they were eating. And further, it may have been great because they were working to support their families and make sure that everyone was eating. But I don't think that in the last couple of centuries people even thought that hard about it. The idea of being happy or fulfilled with work, I'll wager, came with the industrial age. I pinpoint this time as a reasonable assumption because that was when "working" became generally easier because more tasks were automated. Once automation kicked in, it was only then that people had time to start thinking about their lives and their happiness. This is of course with the exception of artists, inventors and others that the society at the time considered weird and derelict. They were living in their own little world feeling special - or persecuted, whichever.

I guess I'm just wondering how people from other generations dealt with occupation-related wanderlust. I imagine they just stuck it out, but additionally, my theoretical grandmothers and grandfathers were pretty much guaranteed their positions for life too. I don't know. I just wondered. I'm on my lunch break and I have that kind of time.