David - I am lucky enough to have my best professional experience on a regular basis at my current job. Because I work in a company stuffed to the brim with data analysts, I am constantly asked to take a bunch of choppy, dry, and in some cases incomprehensible statistical text and make it sound like something the average human would be able to understand.

Nearly everytime I take one of these thick, heavy presentations, edit it and send it back I have the person who wrote it show up at my desk with a look of awe and wonder on their faces, and hear comments like "Wow this is so much better!" or "I can't believe you made THIS out of what I wrote!" and finally "Thank you so much for making my information so much better!"

Of course I am suitably modest about my brilliance and say things like "that's just my job" and "I'm glad you're pleased" but secretly it's about the best thing a communicator could ever hope to hear. I also continue to work really hard at understanding the way those number people talk so I can increase my "translation abilities" in future.

In fact, I've started work on an article about this general phenomenon in case a certain publication might be interested....

Easy. The first time I got an article published in the newspaper. Beats everything I've ever written hands down. The feeling of opening your door Sunday morning, grabbing the paper, and seeing your own face smiling back. Incredible.

When I worked at the state Department of Transportation I had experiences like Kristen's, only with engineers. In fact, when people asked me what I did, I'd say I was a translator--from engineerese to conversational English. I loved that they came to love me. I came to love them, too. Engineers are very easy to work with if you show them what you're doing and tell them why. More than I can say for some execs....

My happiest and proudest experience as a communicator was last Thursday. A senior executive at a big company invited me into his office, and we had a chat. I asked him how things were going. And then for about twenty minutes we talked about his leadership style and I counseled him on what he might do to reach out to employees. It was clear from the tone of the conversation that he valued my advice and trusted my judgement.

I know this kind of conversation happens every day in lots of companies, and it's not the first time I've counseled a senior exec. But this time it just felt different. I felt I was being treated as a peer.

Wow, Ron. LAST THURSDAY. Congratulations.

I think it's important to notice when we feel really good at work, and figure out why.

So that we can push our careers in that general direction--and away from less rewarding work, however high-profile.

We should trust our judgment that what makes us feel good is the work that's: a. Truly needed and b. Stuff we do better than anybody else.

Yes. And in this field it takes a long time to reach that point. I'm turning 50 this year and, until Thursday, still felt like most of the time I was over my head.