Easiest job ever? Sure...

So, perhaps it was a terrible, terrible idea to start a blog in the days leading up to my biggest event of the year. I kept feeling the guilt that I should be writing something, but those feelings were always surpassed by sleep, food, or general vegetation in front of the TV. On the rare day that I got in before 7, all I still wanted to do was get out of my uniform (yes, uniform), put on my jammies and sit in front of the TV with my junk food of choice.
Pre-event is also a bad time to try and eat well.
Now that it's over I don't know what to do with myself; which is certainly an odd feeling to be sure. I've spent the last month trying to be as productive as possible (I can't remember the last time I actually took a lunch break), but now I can't seem to be productive. Bah. Hopefully it will only take me a week to recover.
What struck me the most during this whole ordeal is the amount of times people commented on how lucky I was to have an awesome, fun job. Now, don't get me wrong: I love my job. Wouldn't want to be doing anything else. But the fact that people imply that my job is easy gets to me; especially when I'm working my butt off.
It always happens the same way. First, I have a stressed moment and decide to leave my office for some fresh air. I come into the museum lobby and gaze outside at the gorgeous scenery or, as was especially the case these past weeks, go weed the garden.
Then, visitors come by and comment on something. I say hi like a good interpreter. Then they exclaim how gorgeous the area/site is and how lucky I am. Usually something along the lines or implying, "What did you do to land this job?" Implying that a)it must be an easy/cushy job and b)that I must not have a lot to do.
I usually answer with some smiling platitude like, "Well, it's a lot of work, but at least it's in a nice place." I just can't bear to leave them with the impression that it's an easy job. I can't.
I think a lot of the problem is that we're (and I'm speaking of heritage professionals in general) just too good with the visitor experience now. We try so hard to make visitors think that things just fall into place; that castles never erode, that programs write themselves and that effective interpretation is as easy as following a script.
We all know that it's not.
I wrote my Masters dissertation on engaging the public by showing them what it is we do. Both because people are interested and because I think that the museum field is far, far too secretive. I don't know why that is exactly. It's one of the old-school legacies that we still cling to and, personally, I'd like to see that change.
No one ever assumes that a psychologist has it easy because all they do is talk to people all day; why is my job any different?