it's getting old, and so am I
I've been in a constant state of job dissatisfaction and financial anxiety for six straight months. It all began when my former job forced me to agree to more strenuous terms of service, which I did to try and hold on to as much money as I could. I held on for a while, then I was treated in a way that I considered to be unfair, I became extremely frustrated, I felt powerless and so I left, strolling down the path of life with uneducated ideals and assumptions.
I jumped very quickly to something else. This something else seemed good at the time. Less hours which meant a chance to regroup, a consistent setting for my work (in-office), no quota hanging over my head each week. Turns out I've had so few hours that my pay has been horrible. Turns out that the time-frame for how one is paid there is horrible. Turns out that sitting in the office waiting for clients to come to you (especially when they're highly troubled, inconsistent and questionable motived) results in no-shows or late cancellations at least 20% of the time. Which in essence is like taking 20% from my pay, which is already very poor and often very, very, very late.
Since I've realized what this new place is like, I've been feeling with different waves of conviction and clarity that I need to find something else. This is one of the hardest things in the world for me for some reason. To look for a job while I have a job. I can't fully understand why I feel this way. (Which reminds me, I thought I would be writing blogs to talk about how I'm beginning to understand some things or have moments of clarity, but it turns out that all I've been doing lately is talking about how I feel like crap about my life.)
There are some jobs floating around on the internet. Tonight my wife told me that I haven't done nearly enough job searching, or I haven't done it like she would've done.
I think there's a part of me that thinks simply: Jobs cause pain and worsen my life. This association has been created through my life experience.
I've never found a good job in my life and I'm almost 30. A job where you can say, "you know, I like this. I'm good at what I do and I feel appreciated." Yeah, I've never had that.
This I believe to be the most fundamentally screwed up and frustrating thing about my life. I will fight to the death to make a case that I do indeed have skills and abilities. And I challenge anyone to say that I'm not a nice person who is considerate of others. I challenge someone to say that I'm not intelligent. I challenge someone to say that I write poorly, or that I speak to others harshly, or that I don't know how to relate to people. If I were to die tonight, it would be without having achieved any real success in the work world. I would like my tombstone to read, For some reason he never found a good job and it bothered him greatly.
But this is getting old. I mean, really, it's getting terribly old. Being a failure. Feeling completely unsure about my future. Always having this monster in FRONT of me. This monster of "figuring my life out....finding my niche.....landing a good job....discovering my career.....being who I was meant to be." I don't know how much longer I can take it. I really don't. I hate this place. And whenever I take steps towards my goal, somehow I always feel like it's never enough. It's really taking a lot of energy to keep going in this way, to get out there and think about smiling big and interviewing all the time and keep trying and trying and thinking of new things and trying to use contacts and re-group and then send some more resumes out and then try to weigh out the realities of working in certain places and factor in the commute and the pay and the health insurance and the proximity to B's work and on and on and on and on. And on and on it goes, or so it seems, for 6 months, with no real end in sight other than faint hopes and a vision for my future that has been dealt a first-class beating by the brass knuckles of my first year out of grad school. My second year would be hard pressed to be worse. I mean, I don't know if that's actually possible.
I now turn 30 in less than a month. My life is slipping away, I mean I don't think it's on the verge of ending but 30 years is a huge chunk of even the average lifespan. I had always hoped for a life that would be better than the one I'm living, in several ways. But I guess God has other ideas, He's either making sure my life sucks for now or He's allowing me to ruin myself; I'm still not sure if God is passive or active when it comes to His will meeting up with life (kindof like that question, does God give someone cancer or allow cancer to grow in them?). And God's ideas are always best, even though I have no idea how to understand what He's doing or if He still loves me or if He's mad at me or if He's just plain decided that His will is to watch me squirm. I mean, the strange thing is, since we don't have the ability to comprehend God's will, how can we ever even speak of it or evaluate it? How can we be angry about it or thankful for it? We don't even know what's going on. My theological mind is not in a good place. I haven't been close to God lately. I've just been inside my own head, trying to think of the next time I can do something fun that will take my mind off of my life. My 30-year-old life.
Lord, thank you for people who love me. Thank you for my wife and daughter. Thank you that tonight I was able to have dinner (implying that I had my daily bread) and that we have an apartment. Thank you for health. Thank you for Jesus and for Your Holy Spirit, both of whom I am in desperate need of contact with. Thank you that tomorrow doesn't have to be like today.
I jumped very quickly to something else. This something else seemed good at the time. Less hours which meant a chance to regroup, a consistent setting for my work (in-office), no quota hanging over my head each week. Turns out I've had so few hours that my pay has been horrible. Turns out that the time-frame for how one is paid there is horrible. Turns out that sitting in the office waiting for clients to come to you (especially when they're highly troubled, inconsistent and questionable motived) results in no-shows or late cancellations at least 20% of the time. Which in essence is like taking 20% from my pay, which is already very poor and often very, very, very late.
Since I've realized what this new place is like, I've been feeling with different waves of conviction and clarity that I need to find something else. This is one of the hardest things in the world for me for some reason. To look for a job while I have a job. I can't fully understand why I feel this way. (Which reminds me, I thought I would be writing blogs to talk about how I'm beginning to understand some things or have moments of clarity, but it turns out that all I've been doing lately is talking about how I feel like crap about my life.)
There are some jobs floating around on the internet. Tonight my wife told me that I haven't done nearly enough job searching, or I haven't done it like she would've done.
I think there's a part of me that thinks simply: Jobs cause pain and worsen my life. This association has been created through my life experience.
I've never found a good job in my life and I'm almost 30. A job where you can say, "you know, I like this. I'm good at what I do and I feel appreciated." Yeah, I've never had that.
This I believe to be the most fundamentally screwed up and frustrating thing about my life. I will fight to the death to make a case that I do indeed have skills and abilities. And I challenge anyone to say that I'm not a nice person who is considerate of others. I challenge someone to say that I'm not intelligent. I challenge someone to say that I write poorly, or that I speak to others harshly, or that I don't know how to relate to people. If I were to die tonight, it would be without having achieved any real success in the work world. I would like my tombstone to read, For some reason he never found a good job and it bothered him greatly.
But this is getting old. I mean, really, it's getting terribly old. Being a failure. Feeling completely unsure about my future. Always having this monster in FRONT of me. This monster of "figuring my life out....finding my niche.....landing a good job....discovering my career.....being who I was meant to be." I don't know how much longer I can take it. I really don't. I hate this place. And whenever I take steps towards my goal, somehow I always feel like it's never enough. It's really taking a lot of energy to keep going in this way, to get out there and think about smiling big and interviewing all the time and keep trying and trying and thinking of new things and trying to use contacts and re-group and then send some more resumes out and then try to weigh out the realities of working in certain places and factor in the commute and the pay and the health insurance and the proximity to B's work and on and on and on and on. And on and on it goes, or so it seems, for 6 months, with no real end in sight other than faint hopes and a vision for my future that has been dealt a first-class beating by the brass knuckles of my first year out of grad school. My second year would be hard pressed to be worse. I mean, I don't know if that's actually possible.
I now turn 30 in less than a month. My life is slipping away, I mean I don't think it's on the verge of ending but 30 years is a huge chunk of even the average lifespan. I had always hoped for a life that would be better than the one I'm living, in several ways. But I guess God has other ideas, He's either making sure my life sucks for now or He's allowing me to ruin myself; I'm still not sure if God is passive or active when it comes to His will meeting up with life (kindof like that question, does God give someone cancer or allow cancer to grow in them?). And God's ideas are always best, even though I have no idea how to understand what He's doing or if He still loves me or if He's mad at me or if He's just plain decided that His will is to watch me squirm. I mean, the strange thing is, since we don't have the ability to comprehend God's will, how can we ever even speak of it or evaluate it? How can we be angry about it or thankful for it? We don't even know what's going on. My theological mind is not in a good place. I haven't been close to God lately. I've just been inside my own head, trying to think of the next time I can do something fun that will take my mind off of my life. My 30-year-old life.
Lord, thank you for people who love me. Thank you for my wife and daughter. Thank you that tonight I was able to have dinner (implying that I had my daily bread) and that we have an apartment. Thank you for health. Thank you for Jesus and for Your Holy Spirit, both of whom I am in desperate need of contact with. Thank you that tomorrow doesn't have to be like today.
posted by J B at 9:13 PM
1 comments
