How do you fucking do it, lads? All I can see is the endless 5/2 cycle stretching out until I die (let's face it, if you're under 40 now there won't be a pension). It doesn't matter if I enjoy the job, it doesn't matter is I change job, it's just the concept of it being like this forever.
Sure, I get a few weeks a year off, but it's nothing compared to the amount of time I will spend at work.
I considered a Ph.D., but it will only delay the inevitable.
God, life is awful. Return me to the fucking void so I don't have to spend most of my waking life working so I can go on to spend most of my waking life working.
As somebody who has struggled with this concept for years since my first job out of uni I feel incredibly shit (but am starting to feel a little less frustrated/anxious about these things, i.e. not 100% of the time now).
Some things that have helped:
- Amassing a significant amount in savings and generally being quite frugal. I get great peace of mind that having a tens of K in the bank means that if I got fired tomorrow, whilst it would be terrible, I would also be able to eat, pay rent and still go about my life whilst finding my new job (or fuck off and live on a beach somewhere for a while).
- Exercising/gym/eating. Having control of my personal health and fitness is huge, it gives me a sense of control over my life even when everything else seems so difficult and out of place. Your boss might be a twat, your job might suck, your apartment might be shit, but you're strong, healthy and in good shape ready to weather that. At least that you can feel good about. I see loads of people at work on great salaries boasting about their fat pension pots and wonder how long they will actually get to enjoy it and whether the physical state they're in is worth it (probably not).
- Pensions/savings mk ii. If you're worried there won't be a pension, start making your own somehow. I know loads of people anticipating just this who put into private company ones, invest in stocks and shares, anything to get a significant ball of cash accumulating over the years.
- Holiday and take a break from it all. I never actually use my leave or fancy a holiday, but when I do I feel really refreshed.
- Find a better job. I've had jobs I 'don't mind'. I recently got a job I actually like - who knew I didn't have to have terrible Sunday blues.
- Get some goals for outside of work. Getting a significant other helped massively with this, it gives you joint goals to strive for and things to look forward to that makes the work secondary. I also feel much better having skilled up feeling I could relatively easily get another job if needed.
- Meditate. I'm shit at this but I'm getting better and whenever I get that overwhelming sense of 'fucking hell my life is going to be 40 years of commuting on this grim fucking tube track seeing these grim graffiti walls, I do some deep breathing and everything feels a little bit better.
- Finally, have a reassuring backup plan. It's your 'what happens if absolutely everything goes tits up?' plan. It's not ideal, it's actually quite dire, but it gives you something to think about and makes you assess whether a) you want to do some work to put something better in place or b) makes you feel slightly relieved. For me rock bottom is being back at my parents a few months like a new grad again viciously spamming out my CV.
I don't have a perfect answer but I do think taking little steps so work feels like something that helps you gain control and not something that is the control of your life is a huge thing.
Those things are all great but in order to get them you need the skills, qualifications and network in order to make enough money to save, take time off and pick and choose your job.
There is always something you can do to better your lot and no one is quite so helpless that they're unable to do anything. You can always save a bit, you can always work a bit more, you can always reduce an expense. Think about why you confronted a list of options (some of which don't require anything apart from time) and completely denied it all. If you're feeling brave, tell us about your life and detail your expenses.
One of the problems with the OP is that he's said that no matter the content, he's unhappy with the format of life. Like a teenager. The only way forward is to make peace with it and get a move on.
I worked in a shop for years and eventually worked my way up. I've lived in over 20 rooms in the last 10 years, and I grew up without stability but with a lot of baggage. I'm finally doing reasonably now and I have a plan for the future. I can't tell you how much of a pleasure it is to go to work and to come home and eat a dinner alone, all without any drama or shouting.
Some people act like I just got lucky. I did get lucky but I also worked hard to get where I am. My job is mainly something that no one wants to do, the actual role I don't like that much but I know I can be useful in that position. Some look at that as a noble rags-to-riches story, others look at is as some lowly wagecuck from a shit family.
I'm watching people stay in OPs mindset and just slowly fade into obscurity, much like the late Byzantine empire. I watch them avoiding work and half-arsing stuff only to complain about 'the system'. I also have watched some of my relatives hate work and rejoice in retirement, only to just watch TV all the time and complain. Life is work.
I spend years depressed and hating the world because I wasn't born in the right place at the right time. But, I do feel upon reflection that I was my own worst enemy. Faced with a bad lot, I just wrote off any way of fixing it and made it worse. A grand in savings seemed miles away, yet it took years until I realised I could just get a second job and have that in 6 months time.
Do you think I started with any of that? It takes time to build up and get going and you have to start with tiny tiny increments and the effect of bonuses is cumulative.
That said it's not hard to get started , get a job that pays more than you spend (or reduce spending where possible), get some running shoes and shorts and you're half way there. If you want to move up invest extra time working out how you might do that then try and do it. Even if it doesn't work out perfectly other avenues sometimes open.
Saying you can't do that because it's not immediately given to you is just trying to justify why you might not try.
It's a tough hole to get out of and I wish you luck. Speak to a health professional of its getting too much.
>>29380 >Like a teenager. The only way forward is to make peace with it and get a move on.
I completely disagree with you on this point. Regardless of whether teenagers do it, it is absolutely valid to point out flaws in how we currently live.
If there's one thing I hate more than work it's people who are positive and accepting of work.
I know '377 and '380 lad was only trying to be positive, helpful, and give useful advice. Which he did, to be fair, can't knock him on that. But I do absolutely loathe that "Well there's nothing you can do to change it, so you'd better get on with it!" attitude.
Because at the end of the day, that's why we're stuck with it. People like you turn up ten minutes early for work every day, and then suddenly all of us have to, and then I look bad because I'm the one who merely shows up on time. People like you just grit your teeth and get on with it, asking "Well what can you do about it?" instead of doing something about it, like say having a fucking armed revolution and seizing the means of production and then stringing up th...
I digress. I share OP's sentiment in that I will never be happy with my lot in life. I'm not badly paid, I'm not in a bad job at all, I actually do like my work. But the one thing I'll never have is freedom. Even saving up as much as is possible and living like a student again, it'd take me a solid ten or more years of saving and slaving to buy a little slice of independence. It's a sorry fucking state and you well know it.
I do find it helpful to keep perspective though. Yeah, it might suck to be a first world wage slave, but let's be real, you're better off this way than fighting for scraps of consumer electronics in an African scrapyard, or whatever the alternative might be. You're better off this way than piling up mud in a feudal serfdom.
>>29389 Nobody said I was positive about work, I'm just (trying to be) positive about my situation and having a job I don't detest has helped a lot. Doesn't mean I get kicks out of it.
I too find the concept of my office email/bullshit objective setting/corporate merry go round depressing, but pretty much everything I've said is about taking control and giving a finger to the system rather than relying on it.
Having money allows you that freedom, that flexibility. Being in good shape allows that, being in control of your emotions and mental state allows you to mould it how you want. Do a good job, be ten minutes early, get promoted, get a fatter paycheck, then fuck off out of the system. It links with my point about frugality too - I see people on fat paychecks living monh to month with giant Audis that must be costing most of their wage and they get nothing that I don't from my shit 2k banger.
I think you're projecting a very specific type of person that annoys you and it ain't either of us posting.
I get it, it's tempting to say 'it's all fucked I hope it all crashes and burns' but that won't happen, so may as well make the best of a slightly crap situation than not at all.
>Having money allows you that freedom, that flexibility.
I get where you're coming from, and like I said props to you for providing some practical advice. The trouble is it really doesn't though, does it, mate.
I mean, unless your idea of freedom and flexibility is getting to pop over the channel for a weekend city break more often than the average person. You're still only going to have more or less the same amount of paid annual leave as everyone else, and you're still going to be slogging your way through mortgage payments into your mid 50s or 60s at the earliest.
For you to say otherwise can only suggest you either make a) vastly more than the median income, therefore lack perspective or b) are being incredibly optimistic about what your savings account can achieve for you.
I don't mean to sound like a negative bastard, it's just that for a lot of people, that's the way life HAS to be. It's the only way you're allowed to live because that's the way the game is rigged. It's not a question of being frugal, because unless you're earning 50k+ a year, which the vast majority of people are not, it doesn't matter how much you save. Your savings aren't going to be enough to do anything meaningful with.
That's not to say there's no point doing so and you should spunk your money on fans and scratchcards, not at all. What I'm saying is that freedom is simply out of your price range at that point. The best you can hope for is that inflation doesn't make too much of it fucking worthless by the time you get around to spending it.
>>29392 What practical advice have you offered him other than having a moan and tagging 'at least we're not fighting in the scrapheaps of Africa' on the end? How have you helped in anyway? You haven't. It's just a self-indulgent whine.m
I used to be in the EXACT same mindset. I only spoke (or chose to hear) people who would echo the exact same back and at one time I'd have been piling in with you. The whole I'm not going to be rich or famous and I don't come from landed gentry, woe is me, life sucks I am a cog in a wheel.
You don't have to say those methods work for you, but doing the above give me a brand new perspective and made me feel less like a passenger and more like the driver in my life.
Having the money does make a huge difference and you don't need impossible sums. I would recommend reading about FIRE, checking out /r/financialindependence and /r/fireuk.
But even before you go there and reach the dizzy heights of having a significant portfolio that generates passive income money does give you freedom.
It's bizarre you think that the only stops on the spectrum are having no money and being able to scrape together a city break or having enough money that you're a huge richy rich and that's that.
It's why people who are well off take more risks, are usually more likely to be successful business owners, entrepreneurs, those sorts of things, because you have some breathing room and room to fail. There are, with every rule, notable exceptions.
Take for example my scenario above. When I had nothing in savings post uni I had to take the first job I was offered. It wasn't ideal (in fact I think I remember posting here about it all them years ago), but I wanted to buy some fresh New Balance that didn't have a hole in them and stop relying on the weekly shop my mum brought in and start buying the food I liked. I also had to start paying off my overdraft.
I now have a not special, not noteworthy, but not insignificant amount of money banked, it means that should I lose my job tomorrow I can breathe a bit better. I can still pay the rent, cover my expenses, buy new trainers if I want and have nobody breathing down my neck for overdraft payments because the money's all mine. This means that I can hold out a bit longer and search more for a job. It also means that i have more experience than I did a few years ago, so hopefully finding a new job is slightly easier as my CV is vastly improved.
Take another 15 years if I carry on on this trajectory saving like I do and insuring myself in my own special way. If I lose my job, I'm still fit and healthy and in a healthy mindset, I have evne more freedom to manoeuvre and I might be able to do something like take a year off work to retrain or try something new. If I took your 'my life is shit and will always be shit and I'll never be completely free so what's the point' then I'd have to again, go straight back into the first thing offered to me in the rat race.
It really is that simple. Money doesn't have to be about fast cars and never working, it can be about security and comfort.
I do agree the game is rigged, I do stay awake at night wondering about house prices and all that but I refuse to live miserably just because that's the lot, may as well give it a fucking good crack whilst I'm here.
Disclaimer: I earn about 50k now, but in the times where I felt like this I earned about 21k and spent most lunches crying in my car about the state of my life, so I do get it. I just started going to the gym which made me feel much more objective focussed, then studying more, then applying like shit for jobs I wanted and working my way up. Life is far, far, far from perfect and I'm due a major setback soon, but it's much better.
I grew up being screamed at and hit by a crazy mother. If you want, it's bad that I have to work in the first job I found and it's bad that I suffered abuse. I'm not positive, I'm just aware that if I work hard and stick to a plan I'll get somewhere. A 'sorry state' is how I grew up and treated myself subsequently, not that it's a bit hard to get on the housing ladder.
I mean I can't be bothered carrying on debating with you, you've already proved the point I was making. You've lost your perspective because you succeeded.
And honestly, I don't want to take that away from you, please stop interpreting it as if I just want to be a miserable bastard- My first post came more from a place of a pet peeve than anything.
>If I took your 'my life is shit and will always be shit and I'll never be completely free so what's the point'
Again, that's not my attitude at all, I have a job I like and as much money as I need, but what I'd really love is a three day work week. How professional does one have to become in their field before you can start applying for jobs and then telling them you'll only bother with part time? The answer is a lot more professional than either of us will ever be- Or maybe that's just my field, but I get the distinct impression we still live under a puritan work = virtue culture.
>I earned about 21k and spent most lunches
I mean, that's why I can't take your advice about happiness and money seriously. Clearly you could not acheive happiness on even a significantly above minimum wage salary- So are you really going to try and tell us that going to the gym and drinking lots of water helped you? What helped you is earning fuckloads more money.
Those things might still help OP, but I think he is better off taking a load of acid and making himself more comfortable with the utter absurdity of it all, then realising what a daft waste of time it is to worry about any of it.
One: acquire skills that will enable you to work remotely or set up your own online business, work from home part-time in a cheaper country. To my untrained eyes it seems like this path mostly involves web development, coding, black hatting, running your own porn sites, etc.
Two: meditate until you realise that there's a deeper "you" underneath all the scaffolding your brain has built up, internalise the pure joy of being, live in the majesty of the eternal present, and transmogrify your mundane everyday frustrations into the sport of the day. Or something along those lines. I'm not experienced enough to differentiate between genuine spiritual truths and fancy coping mechanisms for reality.
>>29396 But that's the point - we'd all like these things but they aren't realistic, so why not focus on things that are to make it a bit more manageable?
The point was 21k salary in the car at a bad point was a low, but those things helped and also led to preferable outcomes too, but you probably knew that.
There's always two types of responses to these threads: those that have some suggestions and those that just want to say how hopeless it is becuase of X,Y and Z which doesn't really provide any help.
I don't mind my job at all - good conditions, alright pay (29k rising to 33k in a couple of years), and work I mostly enjoy, or can at least get stuck into enough to speed the 8 hours along. Still, it doesn't change the 5/2 fact.
On the frugality front, I've only just dug myself out of the debt that comes with moving in to somewhere properly for the first time, but am reliably putting away £300+ a month. Still, as has been mentioned before, at the wages I'm at now, I'll not be able to save anywhere near enough to fuck it off for any real length of time.
I also strongly disagree on the fronts of a) it being a "teenage" mindset, and b) that I should make peace with it; I think most people of all ages are dissatisfied with the system as it is (the national lottery is big for a reason), but are in too deep to change it. Kids, mortgage, etc mean you can't just fuck it off. Making space with it is accepting defeat, and I'm not ready to do that.
On the other hand, if the revolution comes tomorrow I'll just be doing a different 5/2, even the most utopian of fully automated gay space luxury communism will require a generation if not more of both the loss of individualism and hard fucking work.
There's no escape from it, and I can see why people take the one in seventeen million chance in the lottery because the appeal is so strong.
Realistically, I'll probably end up taking as much unpaid leave on top of my paid leave as I can per year, and seeing if I can work 9-hour shifts and take every other Friday off.
On the acid front: maybe. I don't think I would ever be in the right mindspace.
The dream is to get a job where you can work from home. Once you have one of them you can basically fuck off anywhere your passport will get you in and work from anywhere with an internet connection. I think that's about as close to freedom as any of us will find in this lifetime.
Most jobs of that type are probably freelance gigs; programming and writing, although journalism (which is currently dying in the clickbait gutter) used to be an option - maybe it still is some countries.
I can't name any other professions like this off the top of my head but there have to be a few, maybe try checking out some of those "digital nomad" websites and see if anyone who lives that "lifestyle" (Christ, I hate that word) works in an area that you can maybe shimmy yourself into.
I don't mind my job, in fact I enjoy it, and it's almost a hobby itself, but even when I had a more taxing one, my interests outside of work kept me from topping myself.
If you have something you're truly excited to go home and do, work seems trivial.
