Did it ever occur that you happened to be giving a pep talk to your colleagues, a dubious one at that when an ambitious fellow pulled you aside and asked the difference between a job and a career. You might have felt the urge to berate the fellow using a sarcastic tone, it is such a simple thing that every professional is aware about save you.
No Ready Answer
However you refrained from launching a tirade, later on it so happened that you thought quite deeply about the same and found out that you really did not have a ready answer for this simple question and what seemed prosaic turned out to be much more than that.
Stay Alive
If we say that a job is something you do to stay alive while a career is something that you stay alive to do that would not be an exaggeration. You do a job for its own sake, at the most to make money, nothing beyond.
Deeply Personal Choices
With some free time on hand later that evening you sat down to dimension the whole thing from 
your own perspective and thought it prudent to share the same with others. An internet search for careers or jobs would return various meanings, however jobs and especially careers are deeply personal choices and must be viewed in that light, so you need a different perspective.
Put Bread on the Table
You do not have to necessarily like the job and there is no compulsion to stay longer than required. It is primarily viewed as a means to put bread on the table and a shirt on your bare back. You may even detest your boss and and it is not necessary that you like him either, no wonder you might be plain bored with the job as well.
Sky High Expectations
Almost each one of us starts with a job, we all have sky high expectations, however we start from ground up and work our way on the career ladder. The beginning may be tough, eventually you make something good out of it.
Sheer Necessity
The fact remains you get into a job out of sheer necessity and it is not the other way round that only perks and money drive you. As a matter of fact jobs do tend to be stressful, more so when you do them for survival.
Trudging Along
It is quite likely that you are practically dragging yourself out of the bed, each and every morning just to be out there. A cranky person who hardly smiles, drives like one who is possessed, is quite likely to be a harried working person somehow trudging along with his job.
Dead End Jobs
Most jobs are in reality dead end jobs, compare it with a tunnel, if you can find light at the end of the job tunnel, that is the beginning of a career. A career on the other hand is quite similar to spending time with a pleasant, likable, enticing person, you would carry on your own without prodding, so much so that the association would turn out to be a lifelong obsession.
Careerists and Entrepreneurs
When people put in a whole lot of their time, energy and passion, into their careers, they are almost guaranteed to succeed. They go to any lengths to drive their careers and emerge successful. One can safely make a comparison between careerists and entrepreneurs, it turns out they come across as cousins.
A Window Opens
They are quite similar in devoting their life savings, relationships and even their entire lives and just about everything into something they honestly and truly believe in. Let us say you do not like a person initially, by and by you spend time with that person and you see a tiny ray of positive light about that person, a window opens, you end up kind of admiring the hitherto unknown qualities of that person.
An Expert
Though imperceptible in the beginning, with the passage of time you become an expert in that field, people duly recognize the fact that you are an expert and treat you as one with the respect and recognition that goes with the territory.
A Career Is Born
A career is born when a mere job is upgraded to a long and satisfying career. Something that was dreadful at the onset, later transformed into a fulfilling career. If you find joy in your present job explore avenues, find various possible ways and means to turn that job into a fulfilling and satisfying career.
Final Words
Having once decided on a career, act on it without procrastination. Don’t shy from networking and mingling with people, it would be an uplifting experience. The journey to the ultimate career nirvana is quite narrow and full of blistering sharp thorns. All you need is enough resolve in your reservoir to be able to pull you right through to your next career level. It takes years of tending and nurturing, it is quite demanding and while you are investing in building a career you are kind of playing with fire, having finally established your career you can go ahead and reap its benefits and a rare contentment after having all those arduous hours over the years.
