I retired. Retiring worked perfectly!
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2025
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quit job
Your job change, you should. 🙂
Joke aside, depends what is the issue here:
- Are you unsatisfied with your job or
- You enjoy/value your free so much.
As others have mentioned, find something to look forward to. If you're miserable at your job, see what you can do to change that. Any small wins you can look forward to?
If you're in a position "do I really need to do this for the next 30-40 years", that's a more difficult thing to resolve. We've set up a system for ourselves where that is the only possibility of surviving in this world. To change that you'd need to move somewhere to the highlands of Scotland or a tropical island somewhere and live completely off the grid. Unfortunately, though, that life is not easy.
Your best bet is to be born rich. Other than that, friends help. Having a support net and something to do that brings you joy makes this a tiny bit more bearable. Go read books. Go to the park. Sign up for dancing lessons or martial arts. Learn a new language. Travel. World is so much more than what we see on TV.
I like my job
Start your own business
It's just that, but every single day
Then you get to send invoices which is like Christmas
Have you considered a life of crime?
You need things to work towards.
Also, if one thinks going to work is bad, there will not ever be a worse feeling than coming home fired and pondering how you're going to upkeep your expenses and a roof over your head.
I've tried really hard to get a job that requires as little from me as possible and still pays the bills.
Life is misery, every week I start knowing I will not be allowed enough freedom to ever stop being a wage slave.
I work to stay alive, and have no chance to plan for the future.
I have nothing to live for besides the people I care about, and my work makes it so I have to spend almost all my time away from them or too tired to interact.
Our world is dying and I can't even be upset about it anymore, becuse whatever happens will be more fulfilling than this
I've tried really hard to get a job that requires as little from me as possible and still pays the bills.
And does it make you a better project manager?
I'm not sure how to phrase this without sounding like a condescending jerk, but that's not my intention.
The thing is, a job that requires as little from you as possible while still paying the bills is guaranteed to be unfulfilling.
There is no fulfilling job in this system
Having a gun put to your head and being told to work or die is not fulfilling in any way. It's a hostage situation. It's slavery.
That's hyperbolic.
When I am allowed to choose to spend my time working twoards the actual benefit of society for a fair wage call me.
Until then I'm not doing any of this voluntarily, it's against my will. Like a slave
It's a constant fight for survival, we've made the horrible mistake of modeling our systems off of the cruel fuedal hierarchies of the past and the cruel uncaring themes of nature. These are things a fair civil society is supposed to oppose and ours is failing.
Sorry if I can't delude myself into being a happy slave for some boomer on the internet lol
"Working towards the actual benefit of society" is subjective and I'm not sure what your definition is.
In Western Australia where I live there are several gargantuan projects under construction to use solar to crack hydrogen out of water for export to south east asia. 1,000s of construction jobs in these projects. A labourer without a trade qualification would probably earn at least 2x the average Australian full time wage doing that. A qualified trades person with experience in this type of project might earn 2.5 or even 3x average wage.
I volunteer as the treasurer for a local 18 bed refuge for teenagers without a safe place to live. They employ about a dozen social workers for the in-house and outreach programs. All of these people are earning close to the average full time wage.
My own job as an accountant is less directly "benefit of society" but I do find it satisfying to help people navigate complex situations.
I think most people are able to choose to spend their time working towards the actual benefit of society for a fair wage.
Oh well I live in the US where the less fortunate are put in prison and forced to be slaves.
I've never been to the US but I'm certain that's not true.
I'm not trying to be a snarky online asshole telling you you're wrong about everything. I'm certain that I've felt the way you are in the past. I do genuinely wish you well.
I guess I was just trying to give you some hope for the future by challenging your feeling of hopelessness.
It is true, we created a "war on drugs" to put disproportionate amounts of minorities in prison after the backlash against integration and to break up the civil rights movement.
Then our privately owned prisons rent out those prisoners' labor to corporations.
It's not against their will but they get the choice of rotting in a cell or working for 1/4th of minimum wage and seeing sunlight.
If capitalism didn't exist and we just had a more archaic society, it would almost invariably be agrarian and you'd need to work for food or also die.
It's not largely different.
The difference is in your example the majority of your labor benefits you.
Currently most working people pay off the cost that their existence incurs before age 40. But most people won't get to retire.
Every year the ratio of work/life keeps getting shifter further away from life. And pretending like Capitalism does us any favors is just ignoring the more practical solutions at this point.
I highly recommend Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. CBT is the best medicine I can afford, because all you need is pen and paper.
If you don't think you can change your circumstance, then you can try to change how you react to it. The core model of the therapy is to analyze your thoughts and look for patterns in which your brain tries to fuck with you. Identifying distortions and fallacies helps to replace your automatic thoughts with more positive ones.
Example:
Thought: I hate my job, everything about it sucks
Distortions: Overgeneralization, All-or-Nothing Thinking, Feelings as Facts
New Thought: I hate certain parts of my job, but I like X part of it
The whole thing only works if you believe in it, and the important thing is that you're not just putting a sunny face on things that make you feel terrible. You're working to restructure your thought based on objective truth.
I've struggled for a long time with the Sunday Scaries. Sometimes it feels like it's never going to get easier, and I'm going through it right now, but I know if I take the time to untangle my feelings then things end up easier in the long run.
Good luck out there, partner
To me, CBT has always made it feel like my thoughts and feelings are not valid. As someone who has had invalidation problems with these my whole life it makes it feel really offensive.
I know people get great things out of it, and that's good. But yeah not for everyone and (unfortunately??) it's the "trendy" thing with therapy nowadays. I just wish there was a therapy modality that acknowledges one's thoughts and feelings as valid, even if they aren't perfect, and instead finds ways to work with them instead of against them.
IDK what "invalidation problems" are but hoo boy, when I'm anxious my thoughts are not at all borne of reality.
Honestly, that's tough, but fair. No therapeutic tool is going to be a magic bullet solution for everyone.
My wife struggles with something similar. When we try to walk through an exercise together she thinks it's about saying that her problems are "all in her head." For my own outlook, I liken it to thinking that although my thoughts might be faulty, my feelings are valid. But hey, I'm not an authority, I'm just another struggling human trying to make sense of it all.
For what it's worth, one stranger to another, I think that whatever you're going through you're totally valid. I hope you find or have found some relief - goodness knows we're still looking
It's not that your thoughts aren't valid. Let's look at it differently. You are aware of muscle memory right? The idea you can train your body enough that an action can become easily repeatable.
Your mind is similar, it has a mental muscle memory. If your mind is filled with a reservoir of negative emotions about a particular thought, when your mind reaches for an emotion to react with, there's a high chance you're going to pull a negative emotion out of your emotional tool belt.
CBT is about manually forcing yourself to recognize and reframe those negative thoughts so that you slowly build up that positive reservoir of emotions.
You want the odds you're going to pull a positive emotion out of that tool belt to be more 50-50. It's not about eliminating negative thought or emotion entirely, but rather just giving yourself an even chance at reacting positively. Leveling the odds.
Negative emotion is just as valid as positive emotion and vice versa. And negative emotion isn't inherently negative. It's what you do with the emotions that truly makes them good or bad for us. Rage could inspire someone to murder but it could also inspire someone to act against injustice.
Conversely, there's nothing wrong with recognizing that an overly negative mindset is just bringing unhappiness and forcing yourself to slowly recalibrate that negative baseline.
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IME hardest part is getting up and getting out the door. After that things usually aren't so bad.
I also give myself things to look forward to, reward myself.
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Thinking about dieing is like a light at the end of this sewer tunnel.
I disassociate entirely. I'm sure there will be no long term consequences to this...
It's probably healthier than consciously working your way through a life of wage slavery.
If I could just delete every Monday-Friday out of my life and toss out 5/7ths of my life I think I would prefer to live for 2/7ths of my lifespan and not be a slave
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Having a fulfilling weekend helps. The weekends where I sit and rot are where I get to Sunday night and feel like "oh shit I don't want to go to work I didn't enjoy my weekend".
But weekends where I've worked on projects, hung out with family and friends, gamed, maybe done some chores or just got out the house help lessen the blow. It also helps that I don't really sleep in much these days, like I'll usually get up at 9:30 or 10 and those couple hours instead of getting up at noon help make the day feel more worthwhile.
Doing all that usually has me tired enough going to sleep rather than doom scrolling or brain rotting. Which in turn leads to a gentler time waking up Monday.
And then on Monday itself I kinda ride the high of having a good weekend and that I can push through 8 hours to get back home and continue some of those activities
You find out, let us know.
I remember reading somewhere that one of the possible reasons for that feeling might be because of the change in times.
As in, when we go to work, we usually have to wake up early and then have our routine during the rest of the day. But on holidays/during the weekend, we tend not to follow any schedules. And then after getting used to waking up whenever we want (or later than usual), we get cranky because our body is (forced to get) used to our working schedule.
So a solution might be go to bed at times that aren't too different from your usual times during your working days.
Basically, some consistency with your sleep might help.
And please don't tell me "just change jobs".
Fair. Can I then suggest a social and political revolution to change the current system in which we have to waste our lives working for rich fucks who don't care about us?
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That's the good part, you don't.
I try to remember the little things I like about going to work. Drinking the good coffee I keep there. Chatting with people in the office. Driving home through the summer weather at the end of the day.
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Work so hard on the weekend you're glad to go back to a job on Monday
Simple, I work 7 days a week
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