Work in the Age of Anxiety
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.
The Sadz
I am still feeling the sadz, and it is really frustrating to feel sadz. I have no reason to feel that way, or to spell sadz with a “z”. I just like spelling it that way because I can picture my former English teachers twitching every time I type it. (Note: pictures done in crummy old paint, not my new graphics pad, because . . . too much trouble.)
Coming to blog posts near you.
But I was talking about sadz. I have been struggling through work, even though people have made it hard on me. For instance, patrons ask for crap. Usually we don’t get that many people up there, but they seem to have sensed my sadz so now they are up in our little nook every freaking day. And they want me to find them books or scan copies from ancient newspapers.
I hate the scanner. I hate big bound newspapers. I hate kindly old people who ask for impossible to scan projects that no one cares about. Why does anyone care about football in the 1950s? I don’t. I don’t even care about football now. But I am supposed to scan it cause it’s sort of my job. It’s not like I have to cut people open. That would be pretty scary. I can just imagine a doctor saying “Sigh, I have to take his kidney out? A-gain? I’m tired.” I mean, I sure would, but that’s why I’m not a doctor.
It’s kind of hard to fit these papers in the scanner. No, wait, it’s impossible.
But everything is monumental with the sadz. Getting up in the morning for instance. That’s a real pain. I’d rather sleep. Stuff happens too early. And then the next day, the same stuff happens again, at the same time. My alarm clock mocks me. Hahahahahaha, sucker! And then I have to get the Things up, who also do not want to get up, and then we have to somehow get to work and school without dying. Sometimes it helps me to play “Shakedown” from Beverly Hills Cop and pretend like I’m a badass cop who is chasing down criminal parents in their SUVs. Bus-ted. But lately, I have not felt the urge to hunt down stupid people in my pretend cop car. It’s too much trouble.
Last night I went to Hastings, a book and music store. Ours is closing, which is double sadz because it is our only form of entertainment save Wal-mart. The vultures have descended and now the place is a total wreck. Employees could not give less of a crap at this point. They know they’re not going to be there that much longer. Sounds like an awesome job to me except for the long lines of customers buying up crap because, you know, sale.
Anyway, I wandered around in my awful big sweat pants (they fit!) and found nothing to buy. I was hoping to find The Thing That Would Make Me Happy. It was not at Hastings. Hastings sucks. So I got in my car, and then I cried. About nothing. And I drove home and I went to my room, and I laid on the floor and put my feet up on the bed. I like laying on the floor with the sadz. My husband thinks it’s annoying but I feel it adds a sense of drama to the whole thing to lay on hardwood floor.
Weirdly enough, laying like this helped me feel a little better. The blood rushes to your head and your body kind of relaxes. Technically it’s a lazy form of a lazy yoga move called legs up the wall, only my legs were on my bed. I also had yoga blankets not three feet away but they were out of reach, so I just laid on the hard floor and stared up at the ceiling. I had deep thoughts.
Like, hey, when you’re sadz, why do people tell you to think of all the good things you have? Count your blessings, name them one by one. Oh, yeah? Well, bite me. I mean, yes, I have blessings like a husband and Things and a house and food and all that stuff. But that only makes me more sadz because now I’m guilty that I have this stuff but I’m not happy about it.
Also I eat too much food. Pop tarts don’t make you happy. They sure do taste nice, though. Maybe I should send pop tarts to Africa.
Finally my family returned from church so I got off the floor. Tomorrow is another day. I hope I feel better then. And I wish I had a better way to end this blog post. Wait. I know.
It’s ME again!
aliceatwonderland 