Have you ever felt like having an 8/5 (hr/day) office job stifles your enthusiasm/drive/creativity? And makes you settle into a mode of lethargy and a routine of work-recover-work-recover. Does your job involve long periods of inactivity (where your main purpose becomes simply being there). Worse, are your work hours not conducive to having a social/creative/hobby-pursuing lifestyle?
If you have, have you developed strategies to overcome this? Share them please. And let’s talk to each other.
Definitely. I despise office jobs for the exact reasons you state. No matter how nice the office is, I feel trapped in them. I never mind the actual work, in fact, I more or less like what I do. But there’s a lot of non-work stuff that goes on in an office that I despise. Life is too short to sit in an office because the powers-that-be get warm fuzzies by seeing people at their desks.
I dealt with it by getting a work-from-home job, but that’s not always very easy, and can be impossible depending on what you do for a living.
Yes, but…
I never wanted to do this job in the first place!
I… I wanted to be…
A LUMBERJACK!
Leaping from tree to tree! As they float down the mighty rivers of
British Columbia! With my best girl by my side!
The Larch!
The Pine!
The Giant Redwood tree!
The Sequoia!
The Little Whopping Rule Tree!
We’d sing! Sing! Sing!
Seriously though, I get quite depressed having to walk into the same old cubicle every day. I’ll figure out something better for my next life. 
I work what’s called 9/80, or nine days and eighty hours every two weeks. Having every other Friday off really helps, but I can’t wait until I’m done with grad school and doing something I truly enjoy, blowing shit up. Being able to get out of the office at lunch and go for a bike ride and/or to the gym splits up the day, and keeps the afternoon from being a fight against sleep. I work with a couple of my rugby buddies, so it kinda feels like high school in a way: Mondays and Tuesdays are spent talking about the previous weekend, Wednesday and Thursday are spent talking about what we’re going to do this weekend, and Friday is spent with not a whole lot of time in the office. 
I have for the past few months but just learned yesterday that I’m getting a quasi-promotion with a small raise, a stable schedule, and every weekend and major holiday off, which is pretty good considering I work in a call center and my client is a big box which means I might as well be a cashier at Wal-Mart.
Give me a few months and I’ll probably be back there, though. Of course, if I really hated it that much, I and most everyone else could just try something else.
Absolutely, to the point of severe depression. The routine is what really gets to me, for some reason.
I’m still trying to figure out what career would alleviate this. I was thinking high school teacher for a while, but now I’m almost wondering if some sort of sales or training type gig would be the answer…
I only have Wednesdays and Sundays off. By the time I’ve recovered on my day off, it’s time to go back to work.
I’m pretty confined at work, yes. I have to clear multiple checkpoints to get off the grounds.
But not as confined as my patients, fortunately.
What?
I work at home, so the environment is not a problem. Any office politics are of my own making. I work four 10-hour days, 3rd shift. The other 3 days I spend at a different computer in the same room I work in. I never see the sun. I love to garden but have to sleep during daylight hours, so even when the ground isn’t frozen, I don’t have time to do much. I have to work every minute of every shift–no breaks, no lunch–in order to make anything close to a living wage. I earn just enough PTO to cover whatever sick days/power outages come along, so I haven’t been on a vacation in 6 years. I work all holidays. I am so exhausted from working that I have no energy for creativity or–what’s that word? Oh yeah, fun.
On the plus side, I get so little exercise that I will probably get to die quite early
Heh. I work a 24/7. Eight times today, I’ve put away the same blocks, the same Legos, the same kitchen set. I’ve wiped the same two noses and the same two butts at least a brazillion times. We’ve enjoyed such culinary explorations today as dry Life cereal and string cheese. The highlight of our day will be Sesame Street in 20 minutes, followed by naps for all. Whee!
Yeah, I feel confined and trapped and lethargic. Worse yet, there is no down-time, no hours off. Yeah, it’s hell on my social life, and what’s worse, I don’t get paid! (Well, that’s not entirely true. I get paid a bit over minimum wage for one of those butts and noses. The other one I pay for, in Goldfish and nail polish.) I’m really looking forward to starting school again and making this a part-time gig. But I wouldn’t give it up entirely for the world!
Absolutely.
When it got to the point where I quite literally wanted to shoot myself, I started a business so I could quit my 9-5 job. It’s a hell of a lot more work, but in a nice way.
Been there. My strategy is to have a light at the end of the tunnel. If there isn’t a light, make one.
In my case I work until I can stand it no more, then piss off somewhere exotic for a few months or even more. Not the best thing for one’s finances or career prospects, really, and you have to endure some stress when you get back to reality, but the experiences are worth more than the cost. And while you’re waiting for the break, it helps to have a good social life too.
I do. I’m an Executive Officer to a General and a Colonel, in a directorate that is twice as large as it was a year ago. So, I’m doing four times the work and have to coddle a fifty-year-old secretary who thinks her shit don’t stink (she’s big for her britches). The sheer volume of information that I have to either massage, present, collect, or disseminate is mindboggling, and its to the point that I don’t even try to comprehend what that information is–I have something new on my plate to move.
So, it’s a job of ‘exposure’ to the corporate structure, but if I’m supposed to be learning anything, it’s only how to put out fires and walk on eggshells around the secretary.
I feel trapped because this miserable wretch has the General’s ear (she’s made her “his favorite”), and I would lose if I mentioned replacing her to him. I have been there over nine months, and after eight, have been looking forward to the day I can get back into the cubicles to get away from “it”. Ain’t no light at the end of the tunnel for me just yet. . .
Tripler
A dark, dank tunnel that smells like heavy, mid-aged woman perfume.
Usually it’s not so bad. Lately, though, it’s been hell. I’ve started working out of the company’s sprawling suburban “office park”, which involves a 2 hr trek in each direction, extending my total day to 12 hours (or occasionally more if the traffic is bad).
End result is that it’s bloody cold and dark when I leave in the morning, bloody cold and dark when I arrive at night, and a large 1-acre indoor complex in the middle of suburbia isn’t exactly conducive to lunchtime walks. It’s not so bad at the beginning of the week, since I’ve got a bit of energy left over from the weekend, but my batteries are pretty much empty come Thursday. I have no idea how I’d cope with this if I had kids - as it is, I can barely muster the strength to get dinner done and have a cordial chit chat with The Boy.
I just keep reminding myself that this is temporary, and that before I know it I’ll be back in my cozy downtown office with somewhere to walk at lunchtime and a commute that lets me see sunshine. That’s what keeps me going on the really ugly days.
Seventeen years of teaching writing to college students is starting to wear on me. Even if I change the textbook and the schedule now and then, which I do, it’s just the same material over and over. And my second job there, scoring essay placement test essays, has revealed that the literacy rate is steadily declining overall. We’re placing more people in the remedial classes now–not because we want to, but because that is their level.
On the plus side, I work P/T flexible hours, get to sub for anyone who needs one, have access to low-cost medical care at the health center, and my campus is considered one of the best as far as CCs go.
I just don’t know how much longer I want to continue doing this. I often think about taking courses to become a medical assistant, or being a home health care aide or possibly a law clerk. They don’t pay a lot but they pay more than what I get now.
I’m not miserable—just searching.
I’ve been working here for about four months now. I was hired on to do some very specialized work, and was promised that I’d have the (software) tools to do that job “any day now”. As I said, it’s been four months, and I still don’t have the tools.
I’ve gotten some work done, but once we eventually get the new tool, it’ll all have to be redone- it’s all placeholder. I literally haven’t had a thing to do in about a month. I come into the office and surf all day, and I’m going slowly insane.
Yes, I’ve started looking for another job- but if I leave here within the next year-and-a-half, I’ll have to pay back the hiring and moving bonuses I was given. So… I get to endure it, and hope that I’ll eventually get the tools I was promised. Either that or I’ll go on a tri-state killing spree and be brought down in a hail of bullets… whichever comes first.
This thread is depressingly short of workable strategies to avoid the decline into insanity.
I use my break time to take a fast striding walk up the spiraling ramps of our parking garage. It takes about 10-15 minutes, gets my blood pumping and gets me away from the front of this wretched computer for awhile. Alternatively, I could walk about four times around our building in that amount of time. It really helps to get out to see the sun and feel some fresh air on your face.
There’s a city park near here which is an enormous rose garden, and it’s about five minutes away. When the weather’s nicer, I take my sandwich there at lunchtime and sit among the blooms while I eat. Then I take a bit of a walk between the plantings, inhaling deeply. It’s a mini-vacation at midday.
Sigh.
Our suburban campus has a small Zen garden, enclosed in a teensy glassed-in courtyard smack dab in the middle of the complex. It’s under a foot of snow and ice at the moment. 
It’s much prettier to look at in any season other than winter, but we’re not permitted to actually set foot in it as our angst and suppressed rage would probably ruin the Zen-ness of the space. :rolleyes:
Your rose garden wins hands down. I am desperately envious of you.
Is’nt a zen garden designed for that?