Sometimes I wonder if the reason I'm unhappy with working is not because I have to have a job in order to survive but that I'm largely constrained into having the same job in order to survive...
I find that I get bored easily with both people and things. It is rare that I find a person or subject constantly interesting. I don't see why a job would be any different. Some people need constant novelty in their life experiences and I need constant novelty in my mental ones.
The trouble is, while working multiple jobs is indeed possible, it would monumentally unwise to do so without a significant cash cushion as different jobs pay differently, if at all...and assuming you can even find one in a timely manner to begin with.
I find I'm happiest when I am free to pursue my interests at will and without outside constraint on the speed and manner in which I tackle it. Life largely does not afford such opportunities to me, if it does at all. I'm so introverted that going to work counts as going out/socializing so my time off each day and on weekends is largely spent indoors not talking to anybody in order to simply recharge.
And it's never quite enough. I only just start feeling recharged on the day I have to go back to work. I haven't quite gotten there yet but I suppose it's the mental equivalent of using duct tape to mend a broken pipe: serviceable, but hardly a true fix.
It is only when I'm on vacation for an entire week that I actually have a few days (three, to be precise) where I'm fully recharged and more like myself again. I've been working so long at my place of employment that I have maxed out on my vacations. I get four weeks which means I get a total of twelve days a year where I feel like myself again. That's all I get. As you can imagine, I guard those days jealously.
I remember when I first started doing my job that it was actually enjoyable. So long as I still had new things to learn and new routines to figure out, I didn't mind going. It also didn't feel like work. My time off was all I needed to recharge so I still got to feel like myself two days a week. As I maxed out in my experience though, it fell to only one day then only the aforementioned vacation days. My job ceased to challenge me but there was nowhere else I could go which would pay me enough to survive on, let alone live on.
I was stuck. I've been stuck.
It made me wonder though, if money wasn't an issue, would I be happier at work? I would be free to quit my job when either I've maxed out what it could teach me or if I were made to feel worthless as a human being...another thing I have to swallow, my need for dignity, because I am still in need of a reliable source of income to survive.
But I think about that. What if I were free to satisfy my mind's desire for mental novelty? I could work anywhere that would take me for whatever they wished to pay me, if at all as I could just as easily do volunteer work at soup kitchens or animal shelters. Might I encounter new, constantly fascinating subjects that I could explore in great depth? Might I meet new, constantly interesting people to interact with...even love?
I just hate knowing that I'll never know the answers to those questions...and that I only get four groups of three days to be myself a year. I just finished up my last three days for the year. I don't get to be myself again for another 4½ months. The time in-between vacations feels so long already...not that this weekend has done me any good.
Four hours to go before I have to get ready to keep doing it all over again.
No way out...
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