Self care? Chores? Try and fix every problem with your life before you have to go back in less than 24 hours to the job you hate?
Self care? Chores? Try and fix every problem with your life before you have to go back in less than 24 hours to the job you hate?
My trick is that I enjoy my job.
What if you like your family more than your job? Hustle and bustle of the work/school week (even an enjoyable one) makes it incredibly hard for me to spend time with my family outside of weekends.
Bring your family to work by getting rid of child labor laws! /$
I’d be an awful person if I didn’t like my family more than my job. Yeah, I’d love a better split of work and home time, but it is what it is. I’m home by 5.30pm or earlier every weekday, so there’s evenings and weekends for family time, but we couldn’t do things if I didn’t have a job that pays well.
I like people in small snippets. A whole day with someone I deeply love and care about can be actual torture for me. But having a short snippet in the morning, and then 6 hours in the evening? Perfect for me.
You recognize that you can’t always get what you want, and focus on appreciating what you have, rather than what you cannot change.
And you evaluate the parts you don’t like, asking “is this somehow serving the parts I do like?”
The job is meaningful if it allows your family to have a house.
But if there’s another job that maybe sucks less but pays just as much, then maybe your current job isn’t so meaningful. It’s just meaningless pain.
By doing this evaluation you get benefit on both sides of that outcome:
Sage advice.
I used to ask the same question as OP, then I discovered this trick (with crap load of luck, I had tried to find a job that I’d enjoy for a long time before I got one).
I remember thinking in my early twenties that I might as well kill myself if my experience was all adulthood had to offer. Thankfully it has quite a bit more to offer, it just takes a lot of time and effort to find it. I’ve never been suicidal, but at that point in my life I seriously couldn’t see putting myself through such misery for 40-50 years until I could retire, and was desperate for answers.
Similar experiences. I was thinking “that’s it? Now i have to do this 5 times a week, recover on the weekend, and then again for the rest of my life?!”.
People kept telling me you get used to it. I felt hopeless after couple of years because it didn’t get better.
Now I realize that a full time job doesn’t need to mean that you are a husk working your life away, always completely drained.
That was exactly it. Plus my job was incredibly physically demanding, and dirty. Then I’d come home after a 1.5 hour commute, take a shower, and spend the rest of the night in college classes. I’d go home after that and get as drunk as I could to try to feel some release, or happiness, then wake up hung-over at 4 am and do it all again. I was miserable. I never had time to surf, or see my friends, or do much of anything besides work, school, Army reserve duties, and drink. I didn’t really find a different path, but circumstance pushed me into different paths, and eventually some of those paths led to a life I enjoy. So, for any youngins out there feeling the same way, stick with it! It does get better if you’re trying.