(Editor’s Note: Sarah is our resident 20-something who likes to dole out 20-something advice. If you have a burning question you would like answered, reach out to us. You don’t have to use your real name — so don’t sweat that part.)

by Sarah Weeden

Sarah, there are days that I love my job at the agency. And other days when it is pure hell. There seems to be no in between. Should I be worried?
– Dani from Boston

Dani,

There are those people out there who say that you should wake up every morning excited to go to work. I think those people are full of it.

There are going to be days where, at 8am, after you were up until 3am preparing for your big presentation, you get an email from your client saying their kid has the flu and the meeting is postponed and “can you just send over the PDF of your deck?”

During those times, it’s totally okay to want to quit your job on the spot, crawl into fetal position and refuse to leave your bed until, well, never.

There are also going to be days where you nail the assignment, your boss tells you that he/she’s impressed by your skills and your hair looks AWESOME.

During those times, it’s totally okay to high five yourself in public and break out #winning on Twitter (is that still cool? If not, insert cool Twitter trend here).

Now your concern is that there’s no middle ground — it’s either the awful day or the great day.

My first reaction is to follow the 50/50 rule.

If you’re happy with work more than you’re not — 51%- awesome. At least you wake up excited the majority of the time.

But then that means you’re settling for liking your job 51% of the time. You’re settling for mediocrity. And settling sucks.

So, look at it this way instead: if you didn’t care about your job, it wouldn’t be hell.

Think about it.

You’ve seen the awesomeness/beauty/challenge that your job holds and you’ve fallen in love. You’ve set it at a specific standard. And that standard is probably pretty high.

So, when your job doesn’t meet that standard, it bothers you. And when it REALLY doesn’t meet that standard — when you have a day like what I described earlier — your job seems like hell.

Love and hate come from the same parent emotion: passion.

If you didn’t say you loved your job, I’d tell you to move on in your career. But the fact that you did, shows me that you’re passionate about what you do. And there’s nothing to be worried about there.

PS. I’m convinced that all of us agency folk are masochists, so welcome to the club.

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