I don't hate my job, I hate working

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Or do I?

I feel weird. This might get a bit bloggy, sorry.

I work in informal education. It’s like the best bits of teaching without (most of) the bullshit. I tend to get bored at work, so I’ve moved around a bit - every 3 or 4 years I start looking for a new challenge. Or I get laid off. Or I move continents.

In August 2013 I resigned from my job without having lined up a new one. I was planning on taking a few months to myself, which I did - some travelling, dabbling in fiction writing, improving my wildlife photography. My loving husband supported me in this endeavour. I didn’t travel as extensively as perhaps I’d have liked - I had commitments at home, and didn’t want to spend a lot, since I wasn’t earning. I quite liked not working, but after a few months of it, I got a bit bored, had trouble filling up my days, felt a little bit lonely - basically, unstructured time didn’t work out for me, for lots of reasons.

In January I started looking for a new job. It took a while, I had loads of interviews for different positions, but eventually I was hired, and I started a new position in August. Here we are in October, and I… am fed up. I loved my new job for the first 6 weeks. The honeymoon, if you will. Conceptually, it’s a great fit. Then the realities hit hard. There’s BIG chunks of my duties that are actively unpleasant. I’m working with truly antagonistic people for the first time ever, and, wow, it’s taking a toll on me. I don’t feel like my training and experience are really being put to the best use here, even if my job duties on paper look ideal. My new boss thinks I’m great, but I think that’s just because I can function in a modern office, be relatively pleasant to rude people, and can query a database better than her (not hard).

Adding to these complications, in January my boss is taking 6 months off to finish her dissertation, and I’ll be acting in her role. Erk.

But, fundamentally, I just think working for a living is for chumps. That a “career” is just a fantasy people make up to make themselves feel better about being shackled to a desk for 40+ hours a week. I’m also really not into US office culture, having started my working life in Australia, where things are more sensible, e.g., work-life balance, paid leave, etc.

But I tried not working, and I couldn’t do that. I don’t think I’m entrepreneurial, and I don’t have the right skill-set to start/run my own business anyway.

Is this just the mid-30s identity crisis? (I thought I had that already.) What’s the alternatives here? Or am I doomed to another thirty years of this bullshit, only to spend my golden years vaguely dissatisfied?

2

I assume you mean that your husband supported both of you financially, since I presumed you both continued to do things like eat on a daily basis.

Does that mean you think your husband is a chump?

3

That vague dissatisfaction you feel is not a thing to be avoided. That is the thing that fuels growth and change. Everyone gets it, and in the right hands it is a powerful force.

Not everyone is good at unstructured time. I am TERRIBLE at it. I’ve been blessed with great idle periods, and through all of them I achieved little and felt restless and bored. I need structure, and the most sensible way to get structure is to work.

What I get from your posts is that you aren’t really headed anywhere in particular. I know you don’t “believe” in careers, but if you’ve gotta work (even just to keep yourself busy), why not see where you can get with it? When you are working toward medium and long terms goals-- in terms of positions, or even just building skills-- the crappy parts of work still have some value. Yes, it’s not exactly how you want to spend your time, but it’s a way from here to there.

I would really think about your future goals, and plan career moves that will help you get there. Honestly, I look at it as kind of a game. I may or may not reach my end goal, but every day I can see if I can’t get a little closer.

4

Yes, he supported us both.

He IS a chump :slight_smile: according to my definition, but he likes his job and is good at it.

5

I think I can relate to how you feel; but I wouldn’t say I feel working for a living is for chumps. Some people really need goals and whatnot so being on a path or feeling that way makes them happy. For people who are that way, what you think might seem weird or that you just need to keep looking or something. To you goal oriented people on a career path may seem weird. There’s people who wrap themselves in career goals because they can’t or don’t have the ability to pursue other things. Then there’s people who just pursue a career because of social status. Some people think a career will make them financially sound or rich. Some people hate their working lives but think that they will accomplish something, get a promotion - kind of addicted to hopium. There are also people who do not have the discipline/intelligence/social skills/background that will allow them to pursue a career but would want one.

I myself am more than a little leery of the idea of pursuing your passion as a career. this might work out for some people, but I think that is only by happenstance. Any career involves first and foremost doing something that furthers the goals of an organization, usually in the pursuit of profit or funding. It is only by chance that these goals will always meet your own personal goals of ethics and meaningfulness whathaveyou. No matter what profession you pursue, financial pressure will interfere with any pure pursuit of a goal. This leaves many people frustrated. The most contented career seekers are those who have as their goal only the goal of doing good for the organization and do not have any other personal idea of what a career should entail to get in the way of that.

I think some people were just born to be aristocrats; with no particular thing to do. What you describe doesn’t seem to quite fit that though. It does not sound as if you are forming any deep emotional attachment to anything you do. That is just a WAG really. Sometimes people have all sorts of things and ideas about things that prevent them from finding that thing that they form an emotional attachment to. Other people are depressed and just take drugs and they’re fine.

What i’m trying to say is that what you really want to do with your life might be something that is radically different than what you are doing now, but maybe is further outside of your comfort zone than you realize.

6

I’m interested in this bit, can you elaborate a bit more on what you see the differences are?

7

stui, I know you’re an Aussie, so I won’t try to convince you how great you have it. I’ll just say how crappy it is over here.

I get 2 weeks paid time off per year. My last job in Australia, I got six. Lots of people don’t use their full allotment, which doesn’t roll over, but evaporates. Why don’t they use it? Fear. Work martyrdom. I don’t know.

I know several high-powered executives in tech firms (I live in Silicon Valley.) Despite having loving families, consuming hobbies, etc., they just work all the time. I mean, like 7AM to 7PM, 7 days a week. One guy I know literally has back-to-back meetings all day, every day. They’re classified as “exempt” employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act, so are ineligible to earn overtime. But because they’re dedicated (WHY?) and they care about their jobs (WHY?), they give up their lives to do this.

Obviously, I don’t work in a tech firm, and it would be an even worse fit than my “non-exempt” role here. But the fact that this is accepted, that it’s normal, even, in some industries, just makes me… I dunno. Horrified.

8

High powered execs in tech firms do this because they love it - its their hobby as well as their career as well as their job. If they wouldn’t, many of them would have retired long ago - they tend to be pretty well paid. You may be horrified, they aren’t.

For you, do you need to work or is your husband content to support you? I know a few people who are artists and writers supported by a spouse. If you need to work, could you work in a much more casual sort of place (not all environments are toxic - this sounds like a more toxic environment than a bad job). Could you volunteer doing something you believe is meaningful (and walk away if it isn’t). Could you establish the discipline to pursue writing? Maybe you could temp - very low commitment.

9

I empathise, because I’m also terrible at constructively using unstructured time, and I have rather a lot of it at the moment, because I’m not going to go back to full time work probably ever (loads of reasons, but primarily children). So I’ve had to kind of grope towards a structure that doesn’t leave me feeling at the end of the day like I haven’t done anything worthwhile, encourages me to get constructive stuff done, and rewards me for the sucky tasks that I don’t want to do, but I have to make myself because nobody is making me (housework!!)

IME it is definitely possible to become better at living constructively without full-time work, if you just keep chipping away at the problem a little bit at a time. And, of course, if you don’t need the full-time work for financial reasons.

Is part-time or casual work an option? My current week-structure involves two days of part-time, some volunteer stuff that I have to turn up to because I promised, and some self-directed time - basically a compromise between structured and unstructured. Mind you, I’m only up to Week 3 of the part-time (and it’s not office work. Yay!) so who knows how well this will work out in the future, but I’m feeling pretty good about the schedule at the moment.

10

That’s the answer. Just do something you like doing.

11

Easier said than done. There are plenty of things I’d like doing, but it’s difficult-to-impossible to get paid enough (or at all) doing them so as to “earn a living”.

To the OP: I’m with you. Having to work for a living sucks. It may be the way of the world, it may be a reality we’re stuck with for the time being, but let’s not let Stockholm Syndrome stop us from acknowledging this simple fact: not having genuine autonomy over how you spend the vast majority of your limited life’s time and energy? It’s terrible. It’s only natural to be put off by it! It sucks.

12

I do find this a bit odd:

You identify “not working” with entrepreneurially starting and running a business? Or are you just saying that would be the means to an ultimate end of being able to stop working?

13

Yeah, “not working” is one option, and “running my own business” is another, neither of which seem great options for me.

I remembered an old thread I started right when I resigned my last job. Sounds familiar. :rolleyes:

Thanks for the empathy/sympathy, everyone. Nice to know I’m not the only one thinking about this.

14

I think your problem lies here:

There are ways to make a living that do not involve being behind a desk for 40+ hours a week. You might not be qualified for them right now, but I gather you’re not too old, and it’s possible to make changes. I, too, can’t imagine doing the 40-hours-a-week-in-an-office thing. I’d kill myself. But I did figure out that I could do 40-hours-a-week working out of my own home, in an area of the country I like, with a pug on my lap and in my pajamas. I made that happen. It wasn’t easy or not-scary or without difficulties, but I’ve made it work for over a decade now.

Start thinking about branching out. What do you actually like about your job? There must be something, since you mentioned eventually being bored and not feeling like you were filling up your days when you weren’t working. What is it about working that makes you not bored? What parts are the horrible parts (like dealing with antagonistic people?)

I’m not saying it’s an easy transition, but I do think that if you are willing to take some risks, potentially lose some money, and put some hard work in, you’d eventually find something you didn’t hate waking up to every day. Would you rather be independently wealthy? Sure you would. So would I. But a lot of us don’t find our lives too horrible even having to work all day.

Another thought: a big part of my diving into making changes is simply making the decision that I would never, ever work another job I hated, even if it meant I gave up a fair bit of money doing it. As it turned out, I didn’t have to do that, but I was prepared to work at a wine shop or be a bookstore clerk (back when bookstores existed) or be a waitress (and make the appropriate financial/lifestyle changes) if it meant I never had to work with another egotistical assholish high-tech engineer again. It’s kind of freeing to make that decision. I highly recommend it.

15

Tell me about it. I just came off a one-week paid vacation. Prior to the vacation, I imagined that I was going to get a lot of personal stuff done, accomplish some stuff I’d been meaning to get to. Did I? Nope. I sat on my ass for nine days doing almost nothing. And that was annoying as hell.

But then, maybe just sitting on my ass was exactly what I needed.

16

Re: the particular personal stuff and accomplishments you were hoping to get to, do you feel you would have made more progress on them during work-time than you could during vacation-time? If not, your unstructured time was not to any disadvantage (except, of course, insofar as you may gain satisfaction from your work itself); as you say, sitting on your ass may have been exactly what you needed at the time.

17

(Perhaps the real ideal is for us to all have taskmaster bosses whose demands of us happen, absurdly, to consist of achieving precisely our own personal needs and goals…)

18

You know, feel what you feel and do what you like, but when you call people (e.g., me) chumps and question whether we’re deluding ourselves, well, you can get your empathy somewhere else.

19

This is why I sometimes wish I was a woman. A sexy woman. I could just marry some guy who would pay my bills so that I could do what I want.

Actually, this started when I was in my thirties. I worked for a woman who mortgaged her house to buy the restaurant where I was already a cook.

That taught me a lesson. Be a woman, get divorced and get the house in the settlement, then mortgage that house to start your own business. Damn, I wish I could do that!

20

Thanks for that, I’m aware there are differences in the labor laws and there’s obviously an attitudinal or expectational difference that must go with that. I don’t think there’s a massive difference with the senior execs, many I’ve known do similar here and as they don’t get overtime but are already on a pretty good wage.