At least, it is acccording to some university mathematics boffins with nothing better to do (although the actual date seems to vary according to where you look, it's always a Monday in January. Apparently divorce lawyers always expect to do well on said day though). Thing is, I can believe it. Today, I have been miserable as sin. I shouldn't be really - I got away from a job that bored me, I'm young (ish), healthy (I hope) and I'm not constrained by a family or mortgage. But I'm not happy.
It's only been a few weeks in this job and already I hate the journey there and back, but worse than that is the growing feeling that I shouldn't have taken this job. Not because it's a bad place to work or anything but increasingly I don't want to work in IT any more. It doesn't excite me now, it just bores me and the prospect of carrying on with it scares me as I look down the barrel of an existence that is deeply unfulfilled.
Trouble is that I have no idea what I want to do with my life and never have. Sure, like any one else, I've been through phases of wanting to do this or that but all I know now is that I wish I didn't work in an office. I don't want to sit in traffic twice a day and then sit in a dark, stuffy office staring at a screen while the inactivity makes me fat and lazy and the darkness makes me pasty. Worse still, I get home and I have to do more work because when you work in IT everyone else seems to think you're a kind of personal helpdesk resource so my free time is eroded and tarnished too (not that I begrudge helping people out a bit but sometimes, the level of request is just too big but I don't feel I can say no). I think I'd like to work outside again, maybe something to do with the land (although damned if I know what - game keeper? Forrester? Estate manager? Smallholder or farmer? How the hell do you get such jobs anyway?). I know full well nothing will pay me as well as IT does now (not that I earn a huge amount but it's comfortable) but every time I have to try and learn some new bit of technology my mind just rebels and I find myself desperate to get away. I don't really want to leave Bath either although I'm sure that on the wages of a rural job I'd probably have to.
It's frustrating because all around me everyone I know seems to know just what they want to do and are focussed on their careers and pursuing their goals and I can't even focus on a relatively low level job because I'm bored out of my mind. Perhaps I've been watching too much River Cottage and I'm hankering for some stylised and impossible idyll but I find the idea of growing fruit and veg for a living quite an attractive idea (so long as the surroundings are nice and pretty - not really turned on by the idea of growing them in an urban setting!).
Sadly though in order to do this sort of thing you need something I don't have: money. Something I've noticed is that an awful lot of these people who down-size to smallholdings and what not are rather well-to-do and have sold massive houses in London or the home counties and therefore they can afford to do it. Not me though. I guess I'll have to go on grinding out my days working jobs I don't care about in dingy offices unless I get very lucky indeed.
Sorry if you were having a good day up until now and my misery has infected you like the insidious cold that sneaks up out of nowhere. Maybe I'll get over it, maybe not. Either way, right now I am bored, miserable and I've had enough.
Monday, January 07, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I go through phases like this. It's partly because IT doesn't fulfill the desire to do an honest hard days work — it's brain work that leaves you mentally knackered but your body isn't and wants to do something. The other aspect is just life and your outlook on it — there will always be things you wish you'd done, but more often than not it's a 'the grass is surely greener on the otherside' affair. In the end I come back to IT — it's a job, it pays for my quality of life. What you don't see is, or don't think about, are the millions of people in factory work, low-paid manual work or indeed many farmers no doubt that look at your job and think 'the grass is surely greener on the otherside?'
You're absolutely right of course. Realisticlly I think it's one of those "if I won the lottery" things. I'd rather like to do what Ben Law has done although I'd have to learn a lot! Maybe the new place I'm probably going to move to will help a bit as it's in a tiny village (although it's only a mile from the edge of Bath) but it's set in fields, lanes and whatnot which means I can indulge in walks and bike rides more easily. Maybe that will allay my yearnings to jack it all in and weave peace crisps from sustainable, organic, carbon-neutral willow.
Post a Comment