Earlier I wrote about getting old and how it seemed to happen without me realizing it.  Something else is happening to me.   I have a problem with work.  I have a good job with benefits and a salary and coworkers that aren’t total asshats.  But . . . I find myself unable to do my work most of the time.  My mind jumps from place to place.  The idea of even getting started on the project I need to work on makes me ill.  Every extension is just another excuse to put it off some more.

Hello, Peter, my old friend.

If I go to the doctor, I’ll be back on the medicine-go-round and I’m not too keen on that.  So I have to figure out another way.  But the cards are stacked against me.  The pulmonologist helpfully told me that asthma makes you anxious and anxiety can trigger asthma, oh yay!  So either way I’m screwed. Right now I have nerves hop hop hopping like the freaking Easter Bunny.  Yet I’m sitting here.  Typing out a blog post.  Oh, yes, I can see the exhibit I should be working on, or what crumbs I’ve managed to form together, but I really don’t know what I’m doing on it.  At all.  The idea of even looking at it fill me with dread.  I want to climb up a tree and hide in a hole like, like . . .

I’m baaaaaack!

I used to have ambition.  It’s gone.  Did I say this already?  It seems like maybe I already posted this.  Oh, who the hell cares, here it is again.  I think Aussa of Hacker, Ninja, Hooker, Spy said it best.  The years of your job are like the years of high school.  Observe:

“Year 1 at Your New Job (Freshman): You have great hopes for your future, you take notes, show up everyday and are there on time.

Year 2 at Your Job (Sophomore): While you retain a certain semblance of ambition you’ve learned exactly which corners to cut and how little you have to do in order to get by.

Year 3 at Your God Awful Job (Junior): You’re pretty sure that you’re doing everyone a favor by showing up.

Years 4-40 at the hell hole where you’re probably going to die (Senior):  If you can’t find a good enough parking spot, you’re probably going to just go back home and get in bed.”

This is sheer genius here (I’m a senior!) and exactly how I feel about my current job, especially considering how difficult it is to find parking.  So I wonder – is this just a depression / anxiety thing or does everyone feel this way?  Is it a universal thing, like high school?  I mean, it’s not like I have a horrible boss or terrible working conditions or too much of a workload.  In fact, I could do with a little more supervised work because I am freaking terrible about it on my own.  Just look at my house and you can see how well I did at cleaning once my parents quit telling me to do it.

Kind of like this, only all over the entire house.

So I sit here frozen.  Well frozen except for typing.  Work.  I should really do some work.  In a minute.  Yeah.  I’ll look at it in a minute.  How many minutes till I go home now?  Oh, crap.

So tell me – how many of you like your jobs?  How many of you are bored as heck?  How many of you have anxiety about work yet feel unable to do anything about it? I know I should feel appreciative that I even have a job, and insurance, and all of that but I find myself freaking out more and more and more and I wonder how much longer I can keep this up.  Does anyone else worry about how long they can hang in there?

Let me know in the comments below. You know I’ll be reading them.  Otherwise I’d have to be working.

Alice

P.S. Help meeeeeeee.