Monday, July 10, 2006

My 'Problem'


Applying for jobs is really tough for me. I mean, anyone who knows me, knows that I really am not happy with my job. I sit around all day doing monkey work. It's depressing. I mean ultimately its a fine Joe job, in fact its a very fine Joe job. Great benefits, decent enough salary to live on. However I for one reason or another feel that maybe, just maybe I should be doing something better with my life... I don't' know how much to go into here, because this is really a very large subject with me. And its already pretty damn late at night; so I think I'll just explain my "problem" and then go away.

Basically the deal is that I find the prospect of thinking about my "career" so fantastically depressing that I prefer to live obliviously to it. Ignore it and just try to be happy. I also sometimes do this with regards top my money (or lack thereof). But with the job. Basically I hate my job, and I find it so disheartening to think about that fact that I choose to not think about it. I can spend hours, no strike that, days and days not thinking about my job. Its amazing. I mean did you think I was bloggin from home?! Needless to say, there are a lot of distractions for me, not the least of which is that my job does in fact have work to do sometimes. Its almost invariably make work, or non thinking repetitive data entry or the like, but it can be time consuming. Anyways, I've found ways to entertain myself quite a lot, while still doing my job . Mostly involving my good friend Internet. So, here we come to the crux of my problem, I don't think about my job, and then eventually of course I do. I mean I have to, everyone does. Some days I wake up and I want to just scream because it's so frustrating and I feel so powerless. And invariably what happens. I realize, hey I'm 28 now, I still don't have a career started. I'm answering the phones for a living... I've been on a "stepping stone" job that for a number of reasons that are for the most part totally circumstantial hasn't stepped me to anywhere for TWO years now. I have like almost zero money saved, and a fantastic girlfriend who is trying so hard to be supportive and is finding it so frustrating dealing with my bullshit that I just don't know how to help her because I am not living up to my potential (and not that she'd judge me ever) but in my eyes, yes for her dammit, but for ME most importantly. aaaaarrrgggh!

It's like I feel totally out of control of the situation sometimes, and I don't know what to do because the weight of it all is so mind numbingly crushing and sometimes yeah I wake up on the wrong side of my life and realize all of this stuff and think to myself 'man, how much fun you had last week, when you didn't give a shit about being responsible, or being an adult.' And I don't want to avoid it, I don't want to NOT do anything, I don't want to make myself into a victim, or tell myself that there is anyone at fault except me and my god damned crazy making brain, but it hard, its really damn hard not to feel like you are totally impotent sometimes.

So what do I do, usually I start ignoring my problems again. Some people get motivated when they realize that they are lost in a situation, that things are out of their control; but I have pretty much never felt really in control of my world. And that's fine; I mean that's how I've lived, and wanted to live my life. I am easy-going by nature, and pretty fun lovin, positive in attitude to this day; for real. I find it crushing and oppressive, and I find a way to just turn it off. Because I don't want to deal with it. And that in a nutshell is my problem... Because guess what happens the next time I wake up and realize that I don't have shit organized, and my life all of a sudden feels like its completely spiraling out of control? I can't stop thinking about how last time I thought about this I didn't do anything to fix it, and the problem has gotten all the worse if simply for the wasted passage of time.

I think I live waaaaay to much in the extremes. Maybe I have some kind of like chemical imbalance. I kinda think that I might, or at the least a bit of A.D.D. Because this kind of cyclical self-destructive behavior is completely unhealthy, and I have no clue why I can't seem to get out of it. Erica, my girlfriend is amazing, she is so helpful, she always tries to be supportive, and not pushy. And she is; I mean I don't think she realizes how helpful she is, and that if I ever seem upset when she suggests I check out some job posting she has found for me, it's not ever out of spite or bitterness, or any crap like that. Its because I have all of a sudden slipped down the pity slide into my own personal hollow self-obsessed world of my own ineffectual misery. A truly unpleasant experience, that I can't help but on sometimes, express outwardly.

On the occasion that I do in fact manage to get my head together long enough to say, apply for a new job for example, which, and lets be honest here, happens maybe once every month (or really for one session every month). I allow myself to feel so good on that single act of doing something, I mean DOING anything productive. That I put all my energies into that one thing, that one piece of hope and I say, 'well that's it then I've finally dug myself out cause once I get this job everything will work itself straight'. And fuck man, maybe it will but I've never gotten the job so I really would know. As soon as I allow myself to feel that smallest bit of honest appreciation for myself, I cling, I really cling on for good. And what happens next? I get so drained, so exhausted clinging so desperately onto my one small hope that I allow myself to slide into blissful unawareness again.

Its not apathy, and I'm not afraid to do work. I think, I hope... Maybe I'm just stuck in a rut. Maybe its really not my fault , and maybe the worlds just laughing at me for being such a schmuck. I sure as hell know that I'm a little too emotional for my own good; but the screwy thing, or at least one of the many screwy things, is that I can realize all this. That I see all this, and I know that I have this totally fucked up anxiety. So if I can speak it, I mean right here I'm telling it to like everyone, why the fuck can't I exercise it?!

I think I need more help. Or else maybe I just need a good job....



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I know we've talked about this topic a few times, but I don't think I've ever told you that I completely understand how you feel. I know it's hard sometimes to see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but there is. Sometimes, the tunnel's just longer than others. =)