My job at the health food store is starting to wear me out. I find I’m spending just as many days recovering from working as I am working. Which means I’m losing 4-6 days a week.
I’m starting to resent my job. This happened last time I worked too – 6 to 8 weeks in, my body starts to crumble. It just can’t handle it anymore. I worked 3 days straight last week and it took me 3 days to recover. Finally, today, I feel like normal.
I might ask for reduced shifts, but then there’s hardly a point in working as I won’t be able to use it to pay my bills. Supplement them, yes, but not pay them.
The other problem with this job? My god, it makes you paranoid. Every day I go in and I read some new article about how I’m doing everything wrong, and eating everything wrong, and should be doing this and taking that and eating this…it’s actually incredibly stressful.
I just want to enjoy food again. Instead I’m worrying about if I eat too much pasta or fried foods and maybe I should be eating hemp hearts and wheat grass and taking fish oils and probiotics and drinking goji berry juice every day. It doesn’t help that I’ve had health problems my whole life, so I’m more susceptible than most to these articles that prey on your fears about illness, death and pain. I’ve had lots of it! I don’t want anymore.
And the copy! Proof every single day that you can be the crappiest copywriter in the world, but as long as you scare the shit out of your customers, you’ll do fine. You don’t even need to be able to spell. Fear is the only tool you need.
It’s driving me up the wall. I lay in bed last night worrying if I was eating okay, and if maybe I needed to completely change my diet and eat only yogourt and raw vegetables. Arghh.
I love food! I love cooking! There’s no excitement or creation in raw carrots. I hate this guilt trip.
I hate working. I hate having a “job”. I’m sorry. I know I’m not supposed to hate it. I know I’m supposed to be all “La la la, I’m an artist, and I have a job and thats the way it’s supposed to be”, but I freaking hate it. Absolutely, 100% loathe running my life around someone else’s schedule for me.
Hate. It.
My body has it’s own rhythm, a rhythm that I know well. When I work with it, I can get lots done and no one would ever know that I have health issues. But when I have to ignore that rhythm and run to the beat of someone else’s drum – that’s when things get tough.
I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do. I’m staying with this job more from a sense of obligation than anything else. I’m supposed to be responsible, stay at a job I hate because it pays the bills (sort of). I’m not supposed to be this reckless teenager anymore who hustles for her dreams and keeps trying because that’s what she believes in.
I’m supposed to settle down, be responsible, share the bills. I know I could probably make enough money from my art to live, but I feel like that would be irresponsible because that’s not predictable. I feel like it wouldn’t be fair to the other person. I believe in me enough, and I think that I could do it, but I also think I’m crazy for believing in myself. I mean, almost everyone else would think I’m nuts. It’s not stable. It’s not predictable.
*Sigh*
Not sure what I’m going to do really.
I’m sure I’ll figure something out eventually.
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5 Comments
I understand. For years and years I took jobs and left jobs because working outside the home was literally making me sick. But when I worked only for myself, I could work around what my body needed, and I wasn’t sick any more. And then I would think that I ought to go to work because I wasn’t too sick, and the cycle would start all over again. Useless.
On the subject of making money from your art, Amanda Palmer has a lot to say about that. (CAUTION – lots of swearing.)
.-= Eternal Magpie´s last blog ..Baby Camouflage =-.
*Hug*
I feel your pain. Jobs wipe me out the same way. Whenever I had an actual ‘going to a place of work and being employed’ kind of job, it left me totally unable to anything with my ‘free’ time. It’s so bad for you.
I wish I could magic this stuff away for you. Or, like, win the lottery and send all my friends a ton of cash.
*offers internet hugs*
In my experience doing what you’re supposed to do all the time, you won’t get ANYWHERE. And you won’t get thanks, either.
You and me, we’re female. We’re also supposed to find a guy, pop out two, three children, always supposed be a perfect mother, a perfect lover, and a perfect wife and we’re always supposed to help others and never our selves, because that makes us selfish and unlikeable. Iff we have to work we’re supposed to pick a job that doesn’t pay better or *gasp* a career or goals bigger than our partners and we’re supposed to pick an area where we help people.
There are so many things we’re supposed to do that there is no option but to fail.
We’re not supposed to follow our dreams, though. Or take the risky way, because we’re supposed to not upset anybody else.
It sucks, I know. I feel with you.
.-= Carina (@chalcara)´s last blog ..Abandoned Powerplant; photos of =-.
My wife is a Registered Dietitian (i.e. “pro” nutritionist). And a wheat-grass drinking, supplement-pushing pseudo-hippie at that. I hear that stuff ALL the time and see all the literature. So I did a bunch of reading myself and I can recommend one book that will tear up a bunch of the stuff you hear and give you the ammunition (at least in your own mind) to fend off the silliness. “Good Calories Bad Calories” by Gary Taubes. It’s hard reading. It’s 450 pages of intense research analysis followed by 200 pages of references. But wow, he proves a lot of people have it all wrong. The super-short version? Humans aren’t built to eat grains (including anything flour-based) and we eat way too much sugar (an increase from 15 lbs to 150 lbs of sugars from 1830-2000). He also proves that there’s no evidence that dietary fat causes obesity or heart disease; if anything, sugars and high-carbohydrate intakes cause it. So eat more eggs with bacon for breakfast, more butter on your green veggies (potatoes turn into huge quantities of sugar in your body), and have cream on everything.
A good “practical” book that talks about the science in less detail but more about what to actually eat is “Natural Health & Weight Loss” by Barry Groves. Don’t let “weight loss” in the title fool you; it’s not really about weight loss unless you’re overweight… It’s about a natural diet that lets your body fall into it’s natural, healthy weight and stay there.
Anyway, that’s my 2 cents worth that no one asked for.
I hate working for other people too. And I don’t even have a health reason. I have a limited life time and trading that time for money isn’t something that I feel good about. Having said that, I also understand that sometimes you need the money and time is the most easily traded commodity. I don’t really have answers here, only some understanding and sympathy with your difficulties.
Oh honey… Big hugs!
I don’t know if this helps, but ME TOO!
I am keeping this soul-sucking day job of mine because I have a loan to pay. And to pursue my dance career at 32 years would just be insane. Right?
I too hope one day to figure it out.
Much love
Tatty
.-= Tatty Franey´s last blog ..Moving meditation – sword dance =-.