My job provides financial stability but my passion has gone. What do I do? | Leading questions

After six months of unemployment following redundancy, I am re-entering the workforce. Initially I set out to change my career completely but that hasn’t transpired. I have spent the last half a year being present with my kids, attending school activities, baking, exercising, reading and staying on top of household chores. At times I’ve felt bored, but ultimately having one parent home has made for a smoother, simpler life.

I’m heading back to work so we can keep finances flowing. But now that I’ve had my time out, it all feels so lacklustre. Reading LinkedIn makes me feel ill – the AI slop, the bombastic words. I keep thinking: do people really care about this?

Meanwhile, I feel nothing. I have accepted a role and want the money but my passion has gone. Nothing work-related feels meaningful now because if it all colonises my home life and my kids end up at after-school care and so on, what’s the point? And the thought of attending meetings and having to pretend, all day, every day? How can I get some mojo back or feel at peace that this is just something I have to do? How do I move forward and be a good role model for my kids?

Eleanor says: I think the way to be a role model is to make sure that whatever relationship you have with work, you have it on purpose, thoughtfully and out loud.

For some people it’s really important that work is a source of meaning in life: “Whatever you do, be the best at doing it.” This is especially true for people whose work involves hard-won or non-transferable skills. For others, it’s just as important to their sense of self that work is not a source of meaning: it’s a point of pride to not have fallen for the propaganda. They would say that feeling nothing at work is a realisation rather than a problem.

Each side looks at the other as though they’re making a mistake. Poor ambitionless wastrels; poor LinkedIn fools who don’t even see the pointlessness of their own obedience.

But I think a lot of people privately waver. Maybe, like you, they have kids, took a career break and going back to work feels a bit like returning to Stepford. Or maybe after years of insisting that it’s all The Man, imagination starts to ask what they could have achieved if they’d prioritised trying something else. Or after years of toil they get the gold star and discover it only looked valuable when they didn’t have it. But it can be very hard to rethink our relationship to work when our social lives tend to cluster around people with similar attitudes.

The inevitability is that most of us have to work. Your kids are – probably – going to have to exchange some measure of time for money.

Being a good role model to them needn’t mean taking one particular stance about work. You do not have to force passion about a role you find boring. Being a good role model could mean showing them that these are stances one could accept or reject. You could help them lead more deliberate and thoughtful lives if you demonstrate that the financial necessity of work still leaves room for a range of relationships with work – and you can think, talk and read about which you’d like to have. You don’t have to drink the water you swim in.

Maybe your considered relationship to work is purely instrumental: “I’m doing this for the money.” You do not expect nor mourn the absence of genuine stimulation. You are conscientious at work, and then you go home. In a funny kind of way that can restore mojo: once you stop expecting yourself to personally care about the company’s metrics, it stops feeling disappointing that you don’t. You can be cheerfully matter-of-fact about getting through the boring day without resenting it for not fulfilling you; it gives you permission to save your energy for the parts of life that feel meaningful.

Or maybe that isn’t your stance; the point is only to start a little further up the chain and ask whether work has to be meaningful for you. Your answer might clarify your concrete steps at work – and the things you want your kids to have in mind when it’s their turn to make these decisions.

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