Long retrain coming

[j4]

My job is so meaningless. I mean, I know they all are, in the end, but this one is definitely more so than many. Less than the previous one, though. I suppose that's something to be thankful for. That, and the very reasonable salary.

And, I mean, it's indoors, which is a good thing.

But anyway.

[Poll #712898]

Comments

[j4.livejournal.com]

I can certainly see the sense in that (and it's what I've been doing since graduating), and I'm definitely a work-to-live (rather than live-to-work) person ... but at the moment I feel that "the remaining hours" are too few, and I resent having to fill a third of my life with something which is meaningless and not even that interesting, when I believe that there exist jobs I could do which might offer, if not 'meaning', then at least more interest or some kind of job satisfaction.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Would it make it easier to think about your work as a fifth of your life, rather than a third? Granted, it's a third of a day per day, but only on five-sevenths of days, and you get holidays in addition to that. When you take dinner breaks and commuting into mind, it's possibly more like two-ninths than a fifth, admittedly.

None of this changes the facts but it might make it easier to think about.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Would it make it easier to think about your work as a fifth of your life, rather than a third?

In a word, no.

In more than a word...

[j4.livejournal.com]

Sorry, my reply to this was (on re-reading) more curt than I intended. I see your point, but to be honest, if I have to keep on recalculating the exact proportion of my life that's being wasted with this stuff to try to make it bearable, then something is Not Good. If you were in a relationship that constantly frustrated you and you could only make it bearable by reminding yourself that you didn't have to be with that person all the time, you'd end that relationship. Wouldn't you?

I mean, are we just arguing from different axioms here? I guess the problem is that I believe I should be able to spend more than 1/3 of my life doing things that are both useful to other people and interesting (or at least not frustrating-to-the-point-of-tears) to me. (I mean, I do have quite a lot of interests, and there are quite a lot of things which are useful to somebody, so you'd think there'd be a fair amount of overlap.) BTW that's "should" in the sense that I believe (and I admit that to some extent it's an article of faith) that in the current cultural context it should be possible; I don't have a sense of entitlement about it. I don't really think I'm "entitled" to anything but what I can carve out for myself without harming others. In that sense, I guess I think I'm entitled to try, or at least not actually morally obliged to just say "Oh well, I got unlucky, here's to another 50 years of boredom followed by death" [no Larkin quotes required at this juncture, please].

If that makes sense.

Perhaps I should have stuck with the original response. :-/

Do I understand your question, man, is it hopeless and forlorn?

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

[no Larkin quotes required at this juncture, please]

Beckett would seem more apposite, anyway.

Re: Do I understand your question, man, is it hopeless and forlorn?

[j4.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of the end of "Dockery and Son". Beckett is always apposite.

Re: In more than a word...

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Oh, certainly clearly explained. I'm just illuminating one possible approach, which (although I doubt it would be many people's first choice) works for a lot of people. I'm carefully not saying whether or not it applies to me. :-)

I've definitely had at least one job in the past which was so much fun to work on and was a project that appealed to all the workers to the extent that we all kept working on it for months after the money ran out, and can certainly see the appeal of trying for a job which could be something you loved rather than merely saw the good side of. It's certainly nice if you can manage it, but it's not essential.