The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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I can only assume from those job titles that all of them have been office work of some sort. As someone who works an actually very different job (chef), they all seem very similar. They involve similar environments, similar mundane tasks, and if you hate one you will hate them all.
My partner is an engineer, but her job also falls into the giant "office job" bucket. She has been diagnosed with ADHD (which is something you might find helpful, or maybe not). Diagnosis or not, it is clear to me that the issue primarily lies in the nature of office work. It is hard to keep track of dealines or communications when they are arbitrary and electronic, amd it is hard to force yourself to work on something that seems meaningless. Some people are worse at this than others.
The benefits of her job are that it is stable, relatively well compensated, has health benefits, is flexible, and is physically easier. The benefits of my job are that I am surrounded by creature comforts, get to do things that excite me, I have direct contact with people every day. I invest egregious amounts of time and energy in my job because I love it and it gives me many more benefits than money. Luckily, I now make a decent amount of money too.
I don't think it is just a you problem, because personally I think most jobs suck. But there is usually a trade off when you choose a job out of enjoyment. For skilled trades, I tend to see it as investing the same amount of time as going to school (except you make money instead of spending it). It took me about 8 years to get to a point where I am objectively succesful, and I suspect it will take me another 4 to get where I really want. I think academic jobs outside of actual academics is a tough road, because you potentially have already invested a lot of time and money, only have to invest more in the specific line of work you choose.
So, my advice is that if you truly want a different job, it will come with big trade offs in earnings, and it will take years to reach a point where it becomes monetarily worthwhile. It may come with great benefits to your happiness, social life, self worth, or maybe not. If that doesn’t seem worth it, just keep a job that gives you the best benefits, pay, flexibility, least stress, path for advancement, etc. Stick with it, and you will feel that you will improve with time, but it will probably take something like a year or 2. You will probably feel more competent after you adapt to the arbitrary rules and customs of whatever workplace hierarchy you choose. Use all of your benefits to build a fulfilling life outside of work.
Maybe an important thing to consider: what would you be "working" on if you didn’t need to have a job? You need to have some sense of personal improvment and investment if you aren’t getting it from work. Pursue that in your personal life.
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