And I’m not sure I’m allowed to say that anymore
I’m late to this. Everyone already saw it. But I finally watched The Devil Wears Prada 2 this week, and I’ve been thinking about Miranda Priestly ever since.
Not about the clothes. Not about the sequel-versus-original debate.
About one line.
“I love to work.”
I heard that and something in my chest went yes. And then immediately after: am I allowed to feel that way?
The Thing Nobody Says Out Loud
We are living through a moment where the highest virtue is presence. Be here now. Set boundaries. Protect your peace. Log off at five. Your job is not your identity.
And look — most of that is good. I’ve spent thirty years building a company whose entire premise is that people need support, that burnout is real, that nobody should be ground down by their work. I believe it. I teach it. I’ve watched what happens to people who don’t have it.
But somewhere in all that good advice, we made a decision that loving your work is a symptom of something wrong with you.
That if you’re still thinking about the problem at nine at night, you must be avoiding your family.
That if you don’t want to retire, you must not have a life.
That if you love it, you’re sick.
I don’t think that’s true. And I think a lot of us are quietly living a version of Miranda’s line and not saying it because it sounds like the wrong answer.
What I Actually Love
Let me be specific, because “I love my job” is a cliché and I mean something narrower than that.
I don’t love owning a company. Owning a company means payroll and insurance renewals and a leaking pipe in a building I own and a conversation I’ve been putting off with someone who isn’t performing.
What I love is watching a needle move.
Someone walks into a session convinced they can’t manage a difficult conversation, and ninety minutes later they’re planning one. A trainer I hired years ago sends me a note about a room she just held together. A client who was going to cancel calls back with a bigger ask. A young manager on my team does something I would not have thought to do, and does it better than I would have.
That’s the drug. Not the revenue. The needle.
And I’m sixty-something years old and people ask me — regularly now, gently, like they’re checking on me — when are you going to retire?
And I go back to Miranda. I love to work.
Not “I’m not ready.” Not “the company still needs me.” Not any of the noble-sounding deflections.
I love it. That’s the whole answer.
But Then There’s the Other Word
The one that sat next to it in the movie and made me uncomfortable.
Sacrifice.
Because the honest version of Miranda’s story isn’t just that she loves the work. It’s that she paid for it. Marriages. Presence. Being the mother who was in the room. The movie doesn’t hide the bill.
And I’ve paid mine. I’m not going to pretend I haven’t. There were school things I missed. There were dinners where I was physically at the table and mentally in an email. There were years where the company got the best version of me and my family got what was left.
Here’s what I can’t figure out, and it’s the actual reason I’m writing this:
Was that a mistake, or was that a trade?
Because a mistake is something you regret and try to undo. A trade is something you chose, with open eyes, knowing the price.
I think mine was a trade. I think I’d make it again. And I also think I owe the people who paid part of that bill more honesty about it than I’ve historically offered.
Both of those things are true at once and I don’t know how to resolve them. Maybe you don’t resolve them. Maybe you just carry them.
So Here’s What I Actually Want to Ask You
Miranda Priestly is fiction. But I don’t think she’s fantasy.
I think she’s a fairly accurate portrait of a certain kind of person — usually a woman, usually one who built something, usually one who is deeply competent and not especially interested in being liked for it — and I think we have decided as a culture that this person is a villain.
Cold. Difficult. A bitch. Somebody to escape from, which is exactly what the first movie was structured to make us feel.
But twenty years later I watch her and I don’t see a villain. I see somebody who is very good at something, who cares enormously about the quality of the thing she makes, and who has almost no patience for people who don’t. I’ve been in rooms with that person. I have been that person on a bad Tuesday.
So genuinely — and I want to hear it, not rhetorically:
Do you relate to Miranda? Or do you recoil from her?
Have you worked for someone like her — and looking back, was she a bad boss or just an exacting one?
And can you say “I love to work” out loud, in your own life, without immediately apologizing for it?
Because I want to know if I’m alone in this or if there are a lot of us out here quietly loving the work and pretending we’re just about to slow down.
Hit reply. Or leave a comment. I read every one, and this is the one I actually want to hear about.
I’m Wendy. I’ve been building Balancing Life’s Issues for thirty years, I have no retirement date, and I still get a little thrill on Sunday night. Come into my living room and let’s get down to business.
