Give your life choices a long, hard look
Today, instead of going home to eat lunch, or eating lunch at all, I shut my office door and crawled underneath the desk. I took an hour-long nap. It was immensely satisfying.
I guess that sort of behavior forces you to examine your life choices. I enjoyed the nap. I enjoyed what I did. But it felt so high school, so college. I remembered sleeping underneath lab tables in Chemistry class, sleeping on benches between classes in undergrad. There's something so desperate about sleeping in public, even behind the relative safety of a closed door.
What it comes down to is that I'm not happy. I hate my job. I've been here almost seven months and if I'm not careful I could get stuck here forever. It's depressing as fuck to dread going in to work every day, to slog through every hour just waiting to be able to go home. It wouldn't be quite as bad if I was being paid a reasonable amount, but I'm being paid entry-level bachelor's degree, not entry-level master's degree. This company is so small, there's no advancement, no raises. Someone else who's worked here for two or three years is only making a grand more than me. Is that what I have to look forward to - a thousand-dollar raise in the next couple years? I was hired with the line that "after the three month probation period, you'll get to negotiate your REAL salary." Yeah, that didn't happen. If I had known my salary would stay the same, I probably wouldn't have taken this job. Then again, I'd be out all the money I've made in the last seven months; it's a pittance, but at least it lets me pay my bills.
It's like I wasted the last six years of my life. What the fuck am I doing?
The economy is shit right now, so I don't know if I should just hold on and keep hoping that I'll find a job I actually like with this degree, or if I should admit failure now, before I waste more time.
But this is not the way it was supposed to be. Everyone and their mother is trapped in a job they hate, but goddammit, I was supposed to do something I at least enjoyed. Why the hell did I even get that masters? I hated every second of it, and now I hate the job that's resulted from it. What the fuck did I expect? If I was going to hate my job, couldn't I have just sucked it up for two years in a different master's program, like engineering, or IT, or something that would have at least allowed me to do things like travel or save more than a few hundred dollars a month?
The entire situation gets even weirder when I think about how amazing my life is. I love pretty much everything else - I have a fantastic relationship with my family, finally. My boyfriend is the best, ever. We're coming up on our one year and we just moved in together. My friends are genuine and wonderful. I'm happy with my life. I have a good life. But I hate what I do, and what I do takes up a good eight hours a day for five days a week.
The malaise that stems from this job prevents me from accomplishing much. I mope and I feel my intellect diminishing on a daily basis. The job drains me, and I don't want to read anymore. I don't want to think or write or create beauty anymore. I just wilt. Slowly, day by day, everything bright and vibrant about me is fading. This dissatisfaction with my work has taken root in the rest of my life and it will not go away. It poisons everything.
I don't feel like you have to love what you do anymore. You just have to not hate it, you have to be able to tolerate it. I'm learning tolerance; this job used to kill me much more than it does now. In a way, that's the saddest part.
I'm so afraid of waking up a year from now and still working here.
There has to be a solution, there has to be something else. I have to find a way out. I'm trying on options in my head like party outfits and nothing fits right. I'm thinking about going back to school. I wish I knew how to fix this.
I'm not happy, and in the end, that's all that matters.
I guess that sort of behavior forces you to examine your life choices. I enjoyed the nap. I enjoyed what I did. But it felt so high school, so college. I remembered sleeping underneath lab tables in Chemistry class, sleeping on benches between classes in undergrad. There's something so desperate about sleeping in public, even behind the relative safety of a closed door.
What it comes down to is that I'm not happy. I hate my job. I've been here almost seven months and if I'm not careful I could get stuck here forever. It's depressing as fuck to dread going in to work every day, to slog through every hour just waiting to be able to go home. It wouldn't be quite as bad if I was being paid a reasonable amount, but I'm being paid entry-level bachelor's degree, not entry-level master's degree. This company is so small, there's no advancement, no raises. Someone else who's worked here for two or three years is only making a grand more than me. Is that what I have to look forward to - a thousand-dollar raise in the next couple years? I was hired with the line that "after the three month probation period, you'll get to negotiate your REAL salary." Yeah, that didn't happen. If I had known my salary would stay the same, I probably wouldn't have taken this job. Then again, I'd be out all the money I've made in the last seven months; it's a pittance, but at least it lets me pay my bills.
It's like I wasted the last six years of my life. What the fuck am I doing?
The economy is shit right now, so I don't know if I should just hold on and keep hoping that I'll find a job I actually like with this degree, or if I should admit failure now, before I waste more time.
But this is not the way it was supposed to be. Everyone and their mother is trapped in a job they hate, but goddammit, I was supposed to do something I at least enjoyed. Why the hell did I even get that masters? I hated every second of it, and now I hate the job that's resulted from it. What the fuck did I expect? If I was going to hate my job, couldn't I have just sucked it up for two years in a different master's program, like engineering, or IT, or something that would have at least allowed me to do things like travel or save more than a few hundred dollars a month?
The entire situation gets even weirder when I think about how amazing my life is. I love pretty much everything else - I have a fantastic relationship with my family, finally. My boyfriend is the best, ever. We're coming up on our one year and we just moved in together. My friends are genuine and wonderful. I'm happy with my life. I have a good life. But I hate what I do, and what I do takes up a good eight hours a day for five days a week.
The malaise that stems from this job prevents me from accomplishing much. I mope and I feel my intellect diminishing on a daily basis. The job drains me, and I don't want to read anymore. I don't want to think or write or create beauty anymore. I just wilt. Slowly, day by day, everything bright and vibrant about me is fading. This dissatisfaction with my work has taken root in the rest of my life and it will not go away. It poisons everything.
I don't feel like you have to love what you do anymore. You just have to not hate it, you have to be able to tolerate it. I'm learning tolerance; this job used to kill me much more than it does now. In a way, that's the saddest part.
I'm so afraid of waking up a year from now and still working here.
There has to be a solution, there has to be something else. I have to find a way out. I'm trying on options in my head like party outfits and nothing fits right. I'm thinking about going back to school. I wish I knew how to fix this.
I'm not happy, and in the end, that's all that matters.