Or how I quit my job in three panels or less.
this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2024
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Me when I want to switch careers before my "career" has even begun and I actually don't want to have a career at all :)
What am I doing with my life
Sounds like a perfectly natural self-preservation reaction to increasingly hostile and oppressive working conditions (not saying all jobs, just most jobs). Why would anyone want a career when most people with careers only complain (and rightfully so) about burnout, depression, and an overall loss of that particular spark of life which pushes us forward.
Hell, just last month we've had a case where a 26-year-old woman committed you-know-what within 24 hours of getting a performance review at work, in which management complained that her already burgeoning workload wasn't burgeoning enough...
Old fart unrequested advice time: delay it as much as you practically can, saying this as a 30-something who wishes he'd taken a couple of years off after high-school to figure stuff out. If you can't find something which'll spark joy in your heart, then try to find something which won't completely ruin it, at least - like elevator music, something you can ignore. And in the meantime, lean into your passions.
And, most importantly, don't get stuck in thinking about productivity. Productivity is nothing but a societal construct meant to make us hate ourselves if we're not constantly working. But biology doesn't function like that, and it is never idle. Even when doing "nothing," your body is churning away at perpetuating your existence, which, if you ask me, is the hardest job of them all nowadays...
An elevator music job is exactly what I want. Something that I can do four days a week, that doesn't totally suck, and that I don't have to think about when I'm not at work. Add work-from-home and I'll be the happiest fella around. My big issue with my "career" is that I'm about to graduate with a degree that's not entirely useless but very general, if that makes sense. There will always be someone with more adequate, more specific qualifications than me, and because there are very few jobs in my field that I wouldn't hate, my options are extremely limited. My current job would fit the bill fairly well if it paid better, but the company only hires students for it, and if I wanted to stay with them after graduating, I'd need to become something like a team leader. Add that I'll definitely be one of the first to go if they run into financial hardships, and it doesn't feel like a viable career any more.
That's why I'm thinking about doing an apprenticeship in a completely different field that has way more job opportunities that are, on average, better paid and more secure. It's still a scary thought, though. I've been in the "trying to find myself" phase for so long, but my interests change so rapidly that I never really pursue anything for long enough to actually find myself in any of it.
I agree that working conditions are often hostile to human nature, and I guess our entire economic system needs a major overhaul to create a world where people like the 26-year-old woman you mention don't see themselves forced to do things like that (it's also really fucking with my head whenever I hear that someone who's younger than me has died). I try my best to put myself in a position where I'll never have to even think about doing that because of a job, and I definitely have the kind of mindset that puts work last, but living in a world like this is extremely taxing nonetheless. It's not just the body perpetuating existence that's so hard. It's the extreme mental strain of living under conditions that make perpetuating existence so difficult that is really taking its toll on me.
And I appreciate your old fart advice. Thank you <3
That sounds incredibly stressful, and I'm truly sorry you find yourself in this situation... But I honestly wouldn't stress so much about the degree. I don't know the exact hiring standards 'round your parts, but mine has entered the discussion precisely zero times in 12 years of working. I've just quit a QA Engineer position where I was considered Senior (for some reason...) and all I have under my belt is a Bachelor's in Theatre Acting.
To be fair, I literally started from the bottom, my first job paid the bare minimum and I languished there for about 4 years (big corpo, one of a hundred billion nameless faces, that kind of deal) before they pushed me to PM basically because they had nobody else with that amount of time spent on the procedures. Got lucky because that's where the Liberal Arts background actually came in handy, helps with people stuff. And I just launched afterwards through start-ups (although I really don't recommend them nowadays, VERY volatile), where they needed skill over paperwork.
Point is, skill always shines through eventually. Just make sure you keep yourself sane until you get there!
I wouldn't beat myself up about not finding myself, either. And, honestly, I don't think anyone ever will, because we're so dynamic in terms of psychology, that by the time you find something which'd work with you as you are now, you'll have been a thousand different "you"s and it will be obsolete. I try to apply the engineer's credo: "good enough is good enough," whatever doesn't piss me off to the point of going apeshit is a-ok in my book! Edit to add: I also believe the journey's more important.
As a (veeery sloowly) recovering stress addict, I can guarantee that the two are directly linked, the body does, indeed, keep the score. Just imagine the kind of damage done by the kind of existential anxiety you're describing... I'll not insult you by assuming I know exactly what you're going through, but I do understand what you mean. Think it's affecting all of us in one way or another, it's been feeling like the rumble before the wall of snow for a couple of years now...
It's my absolute pleasure, and I hope it helped at least with letting you know you're not alone out there. Just hunker down as best you can and take care of your soul. Not saying this with any connotation, protect that spark which is You at any cost, and spoil it like you would your own child.