I guess there are a few different reactions to feeling trapped. I can think of three right now but I'm sure there are more. The first is to simply make the best of a bad situation, the second is to lament that situation, and the third is to try and break down the walls.
Mostly, and for various reasons, I have oscillated between the first and second, but now I am trying the third and I am immediately reminded of why it has been a while since the last time I have tried. Getting out is a fucking hassle.
More specifically, looking for work is a hassle. A fucking hassle.
There are a lot of tragedies that have come from the current financial crisis, or rather, the most recent dredging of the river upon which money flows to ensure that it travels more freely to its destination, the pockets of the wealthy. I wouldn't consider my situation tragic at all. I am employed. Yes, I am unhappy, but that's just "adulthood" for the majority of Americans. But part of the "new normal" that is going to make "normal" suck for all but the most well-adjusted type-A personalities out there is that the relationship between employer and employee has changed, I think, permanently. The scarcity of jobs, and the fact that so many of the new ones that are being created and will be created, are crappy, just means that us beggars will have to beg more intensely for less. And I wonder where that places me.
I really haven't found my metier, or at least one that feeds me. And I worry that my life will be a succession of jobs that will never be fulfilling and, by design, will never quite pay me enough to escape. I know that running a small business could be a way out, but the start-up costs, the loans, oh my. And the price of that self-determination would be a massive increase in the time I would have to dedicate to work. I could do something I wanted to do, but so much more of it that I'm not sure I would want to do it anymore. One hundred hours a week of poring over the details of my cozy little bar might make me nostalgic for the fifty I now dedicate towards tedium, or at least for the other fifty hours I have to recover from it.
There is no ending to the story today, no epiphany and no insight. The weekend is almost here.
Mostly, and for various reasons, I have oscillated between the first and second, but now I am trying the third and I am immediately reminded of why it has been a while since the last time I have tried. Getting out is a fucking hassle.
More specifically, looking for work is a hassle. A fucking hassle.
There are a lot of tragedies that have come from the current financial crisis, or rather, the most recent dredging of the river upon which money flows to ensure that it travels more freely to its destination, the pockets of the wealthy. I wouldn't consider my situation tragic at all. I am employed. Yes, I am unhappy, but that's just "adulthood" for the majority of Americans. But part of the "new normal" that is going to make "normal" suck for all but the most well-adjusted type-A personalities out there is that the relationship between employer and employee has changed, I think, permanently. The scarcity of jobs, and the fact that so many of the new ones that are being created and will be created, are crappy, just means that us beggars will have to beg more intensely for less. And I wonder where that places me.
I really haven't found my metier, or at least one that feeds me. And I worry that my life will be a succession of jobs that will never be fulfilling and, by design, will never quite pay me enough to escape. I know that running a small business could be a way out, but the start-up costs, the loans, oh my. And the price of that self-determination would be a massive increase in the time I would have to dedicate to work. I could do something I wanted to do, but so much more of it that I'm not sure I would want to do it anymore. One hundred hours a week of poring over the details of my cozy little bar might make me nostalgic for the fifty I now dedicate towards tedium, or at least for the other fifty hours I have to recover from it.
There is no ending to the story today, no epiphany and no insight. The weekend is almost here.
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