luc said:
Congratulations, keyhole! It seems to me that this is another excellent example on how the universe works, opening doors when you least expect them. Great!
Well guys, the universe really does seem to work in deceptive ways sometimes, and maybe there are some things that are simply too good to be true. Yesterday I quit the job and am currently jobless, and it is the best I have felt in weeks.
I have some confessions to make...Working this job seems to have actually had quite a destructive effect on my overall mental health, and I think for a while i had a kind of normalcy bias towards the dreadful situation I was actually in. A brief overview of what took place goes like this:
1.
Long travel and inadequate sleep I was awake for 5:15am five days a week so my boss could pick me up at 5:40. One of the problems was that I would very rarely manage to get adequate sleep. There was roughly 2 hours daily travel to the job in a van, and 2 hours travel back from the job. That means 4+ hours daily in the van, listening to loud pop-culture radio music.
2.
Low wage for the amount of hours I would arrive home at roughly 6pm daily. Which means that I was out of the house for 12 hours daily for five days a week, and only getting payed £60 per day (lower than the minimum wage).
3.
Very little free time - After arriving home, I would need to cook my breakfast for the next day, wash my lunch boxes and sort out everything else I would need for the next day. My daily aim was to spend some quality time with Thorn, research SOTT, read/participate on the forum, AND read whichever book I was currently reading. (An impossibly high expectation of my own abilities, an unachievable aim that could not be achieved, which ultimately paved the way for feelings of shame and anger towards myself for failing). When I arrived home I was exhausted daily, partly from the manual labor and partly from having to deal with the people I worked with. I would usually have no time to do anything productive, and would end the day feeling relatively dissapointed with myself
4.
Physical danger - When I entered the van to travel to work, the group of two men that I worked with smoked cannabis while driving. The speed that they used to drive at was actually insane, and occasionally I was scared for my life. On the way back from work they would stop off at the shop before the long journey home and buy four pint cans of beer each. So on the way back, these guys were smoking cannabis and getting drunk while driving like lunatics, rushing to get back home. You can probably imagine the type... its the exact type of people my parents used to warn me about before taking driving lessons. Real maniacs. One thing that I observed in myself was the way in which I gradually became desensitized to this way of driving, and digging deeper I think that there is actually an aspect of me that enjoys the "thrill"
There is also no health and safety measures. My boss was trying to convince my to use a large, heavy, electronic "Circular Saw" to cut the side of a wooden board while attempting to balance on a broken wobbly ladder and hold this peice of machinery ABOVE my head. This Saw could literally slice a persons arm off in a second or two. I could FEEL deep down this this was just wrong, but I attempted to do it because I did not want to lose my job.
5.
Psychic Hygeine- The only way I can really describe these people are complete and utter social neanderthals. Honestly, I don't recall being in the presence of people like this for a very long time. Perhaps it is my naivete. But these people honestly strike me as some of the most repulsive human beings I have ever met.
One example: We are driving down the road and there are two black/asian children walking to school... Their response is:
"Run the little N*ggas over, shouldn't even fu*king be here anyway".
I don't think it's necessary to go into any more detail, as it is quite obvious the type of people I am talking about. These are the types of people I have had to spend 12 hours a day with, 5 days a week. I feel asif my soul has been gradually broken down, torn apart and stamped on the floor. My mood has been abnormally low, my energy levels have been lacking and I haven't even felt like ive had the motivation to read SOTT.
My boss also treated me as if I was a child at times, speaking to me as if I was useless. I will admit that this reminded me of the way that my father spoke to me when I was a child sometimes... I am also beginning to become familiar with this particular character through my own behaviour, observing myself and the different I's that are present within me has helped me see that this is the role that I take on in other relationships. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why I persisted with the job? It was a continuation of the relationship I have had with my dad, so maybe feeds the aspect of myself that is constantly seeking approval from him. You know, like the "Narcisstistic Well"?
I was holding off from networking about some of the troubles I have been facing since the beginning of this job, and I am not quite sure why. I think it is probably a conglomeration of factors that kept me there for so long. I do think that one of the main factors was the avoidance of feeling like a "failure". When confronting the possibility of leaving the job, there were certainly feelings of shame and also of guilt. Shame because in that moment, it makes me an inherently bad person if I cannot complete a task that I have set myself (in this case, stick to the job, not to give up).
Guilt because I felt like I owed the company, I told them I would like to work for them and choosing against working for them reflects on my character badly, therefore I should essentially stick to the job.
Now this is what is happening with my emotional life. Logically I can look at this situation, see that this job was not conducive to my Aim and was completely destructive. Although, I would normalize these terrible working conditions and intentionally put myself through the internal and external stress that eventually led to a near enough meltdown.
Looking back, I think that that I was placing myself in these horrid conditions and persisting with this job mainly because doing something different would involve acknowledging my feelings and facing up to the programmes: 1:shame for being a failure 2.guilt for acting in favour of my well-being. Because I have been so afraid of facing these feelings, I am unconsciously willing to put my body and my mind through extreme amounts of stress in order to avoid FEELING the uncomfortable sensation. These are my ideas, although I would appreciate it if anyone else has any other feedback. Thanks for reading
Edit: Dissapointed with myself