Jobs are important. Having the money to survive your life and pay your way through it while also having some extra to do fun things is important. It’s so important to many that we get jobs that are a complete and utter waste of time. They have no meaning. They add nothing to our lives nor do they enrich it any way. So we have to find our fun outside of work, make that money we earned doing useless task after useless task mean something. To have it matter in some way.
Maybe that fun stuff is donating to charity, maybe it’s simply going to the bar with friends to have a few drinks and relax or maybe it’s renting a movie and relaxing at home. For everyone it’s different. For everyone it is special.
But what if you don’t have that? What if you go home from work each and every day and just feel sad that your life has been reduced to this?
Or what if, after a day of meaningless work, you are so tired and strung out that you have nothing left to offer anyone and just crawl into bed at 8:30pm because you know it all starts over again tomorrow?
Is this depression? Maybe it is. Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s a feeling of being stuck as a cog in a wheel that goes absolutely nowhere. That day in and day out you go to work, you do your job (in a mediocre fashion because really, what does it matter?) and then you go home. Eat dinner. Go to bed. Lather, rinse and repeat for tomorrow.
I don’t have any answers here. I am merely trying to figure my place in this world. Because I work at a job that is so completely without meaning that I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know how I am going to continue waking up at 6am and going to a place where people obsess about the weather, where they rant and rave against invisible toilet paper snatchers and where they make everyone take a turn at being kitchen captain and then are mystified when their kitchen captains DON’T GIVE A SHIT about it.
I try to look at the good. They are kind and seemingly compassionate people who have been very patient while I have fallen apart mentally and physically these last two months. They have not questioned or become angry at my missing work (I have missed more work here than I ever did in the six years I worked at ATM, go figure) and they don’t care how much vacation time you take. I can wear jeans and flip flops. I can sit here writing my blog post and no one notices. There are very clear “Pro’s” to this job.
It’s just that the “Con’s” are making me feel crazy. The work runs dry a lot so I end up sitting her with nothing to do. It also gives me 8 hours each day to contemplate my place in the world as I suffer through my very first existential crises. Good and Bad. Too much time to think about yourself and your problems can oftentimes create MORE problems. In the end though, it has given me the space to see what MY issues are and how to go about rectifying them. So that is a plus right?
I guess in the end it is a way to make money, it’s health insurance, it’s a way to keep a roof over my head, food in my belly and a cold glass of whiskey in my hand.
But it cannot last for long. Or I might just lose my way and I cannot lose my way again. It took me far too many years for me to find it. So if you see me on the street and I start obsessing about the weather and toilet paper, give me a good HARD smack across the face and remind me that there are other things to obsess about.
Christian Bale for one.
Cookies for two.
Booze for three.
What I do for a LIVING isn’t important. Who I AM is what matters.
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