Do you get up most mornings excited about going to work at your job? Or do you start your average day wondering how you got stuck in this rut anyway?

If you said yes to the first question, that's great! You're one of the 20%. You probably have a challenging and otherwise satisfying job.

However, if you're one of the other 80% you grudgingly crawl out of bed to inevitably propel yourself to your job. You do it because you have mouths to feed, bills to pay, taxes, etc. You're truly one of the very fortunate ones if you can honestly say you'd go to work at your job for free. More often than not, in my experience, that's not the case. Most people go to work because they have to, not because they get a kick out of making their boss happy. I realize there are some exceptions. But they're in the job-happy 20% or so.

Have you given some thought to why you feel the way you do about your job? We're taught from childhood that we should work hard in school so we can go on to college. Education is important to getting a good job so we can work hard climbing the ladder to success. Guidance Counsellors, career advisors and the like all try to help us determine our best career choices. Much too often in spite of their best efforts and our own we miss the mark. It's not so much the actual career choice, necessarily, as it is the environmental factors and group dynamics of the workplace.

Hopefully you've landed in a job where you truly enjoy the work you do. Even so, you may find that you're in a barely tolerable situation because one or more of your peers rubs you the wrong way. Maybe it's your boss you just can't stand working with. So you sometimes find yourself working hard on improving your working conditions. When that happens you end up doing less of the work you love and realizing this isn't the dream job you worked so hard for.

So many go through life in a rut. While you may have chosen a career you love the ideal job is usually an elusive dream. Most never find it, instead settling for passable salaries, long commutes and workplace disharmony. Then to top it off, most retirees end up living hand to mouth, with a meager bank account if any.

So if you find yourself becoming more and more aware of feelings of hate towards your job you're in the majority. Oh, and that home business you've been thinking about starting...that may be the best idea yet. A few hours a week could turn into a nice tidy supplemental retirement plan.

Arem Brady is a freelance writer and webmaster You can learn more about Why 80% of Americans Hate Their Job at: http://www.didyousmellthat.com