Kim and I took Lucy and two of her cousins to a Madison Mallards baseball game recently. I brought my camera and managed to snap a few photos of Millie, one of the mascots, and she danced down the first base line jazzing up the crowd.

It’s an ok photo, but did you see it?

Look closer at Millie’s eye, and you’ll notice the face of the performer inside the costume. She’s smiling.

When fitted with the standard emotionally unchanging giant heads, most sports mascots have to communicate primarily through energy and mime. Unsurprisingly, on the outside, Millie was a happy and upbeat oversized Mallard.

But it was kind of neat to look at this photo later and realize that, although the crowd couldn’t see it, the person who brought Millie to life was also having a good time. Clearly, she loved what she was doing.

I’d be willing to wager that if she didn’t, we’d be able to tell from her performance, even though we couldn’t see her face under the mask.

That’s true of the rest of us as well. I like to think that I’m pretty good at faking enthusiasm and passion when I need to. But I’m not. No one is. No matter what your occupation, whether your title is vice president or stay-at-home parent, people can tell if you’re passionate about your work by your performance.

Life is too short to be spending big chunks of it doing something you’re not passionate about.

If you don’t love what you’re doing, we can tell.

I suspect that just about everybody alive would prefer to be doing something they love. Not something unrealistic in which there are no problems and no headaches. (Those occupations don’t exist.) But something they are good at, something that makes them happy and makes a difference. Something in which hard work barely seems like work at all.

Everybody should be doing what they love. Unfortunately, not enough people are.

Are you?

I hope so. If not, I really hope you’re at least working toward it.

Otherwise, what the hell are you waiting for?