What is your ideal for the most fulfilling job you can think of? I think partly just because you would consider something a job means there is something unfulfilling about it. A completely fulfilling job would likely then be a beloved hobby that you happen to be lucky to get paid for.
Since we’re living in fantasyland anyway, I am going to go off the reservation a bit and just make up a job as my idea of the most fulfilling job. My most fulfilling job would be taking DNA samples of white supremacists and letting them know how many black people they were related to. It would be extra fulfilling if I could tell them they were related to Barack Obama.
Not really an answer to your question but I’ll throw this quote out which I think I got out of comments on Balloon Juice:
Hobbies aren’t logical. If they were they wouldn’t be hobbies. They’d be jobs.
I think the difference between hobby vs job is that a job is something you do with the expectation of somebody paying you for doing it, while a hobby is something you do despite not getting paid for doing it. I don’t think how much you enjoy it should factor into the definitions.
Anyway, my most fulfilling and real job out there would be as a world renowned food critic. Not only would I be getting paid to travel the world to eat in the best restaurants enjoying the best culinary arts the world has to offer, but I ALSO get the satisfaction of being able to tell the high-strung, perfectionist, despotic chiefs of the world that their sauce is a little bland.