Taking my promotion to managing editor would've been by and large a mistake (from the perspective of my personal happiness) if my job were what it should've been, instead of Freelance Editor/Night Editor/whatever else was required on any given night. Taking me out of the newsroom isn't something I'll ever take again, not so long as I care about how news is reported. Also, I'd already reached the Income Effect part of my labor demand curve before I was promoted - I took the job because it was less work on a daily basis but more overall responsibility, which is what the paper needed for me to do. Which sounds all martyr-like, but I would've liked to keep my job as Metro Editor, but the normal good of the quality of the paper, which comprised my life, became my Income Effect motivation, not the extra money I'd be making.

Not sure if all that made sense. I think my point was that there is no definition for a normal good when it comes to someone who derives satisfaction from his or her job on the level equal to free time for others.

However, I would take that job if my free time became suddenly more important. Like right now, I'm neck-deep in Stargate Atlantis. I want to spend my time reading discussions and fic and participating in fandom again, something I haven't really felt in a while. So the journalism thing has, for the moment, waned a little in my totem of normal goods.

But patriotism etc. go into raising service (work) to a normal good. So a soldier is again off the chart because his labor demand curve doesn't even really bend because it's not affected by money. Like his demand for the normal good of service is inelastic - he'll obtain it at any price. Instead of a labor demand curve, it becomes a simpler supply/demand curve.