Tag: work

Working Life

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I always remember being told when I was younger that it was ‘better to work to live, rather than live to work’. As if to say that a job isn’t the ‘be all and end all’. And that working is just one small part of our lives. 

But in reality, I have never found it so straight forward. 

That job which takes up a ‘small part of our lives’ actually takes up a lot of hour time. In fact other than sleeping, I would say that work is what people spend most of their time doing. But that job is only there so that we can afford the life we want. Because you spend so much time at work, it is essential that you should find joy from it, or at least part of it. Whether it’s the actual job you do or the people you work with that makes you get up in the morning, it’s important that there is something. It helps work become more bearable. 

Everyone has had that one job they hated. Where there was no joy, and work seemed to be all that you could focus on. Sometimes it happens, whether it a crappy medial job, or your dream job.  Where work becomes stressful and your focus seems to be on what is making you stressed. And that makes things seem so much work. It’s times like this, that you need a bit of scope. You need to take a step back, and realise that work isn’t everything. Your life is not just work. And if it is, maybe you need to invest some time in you. Go out for a movie, or have a pamper session. Make you feel special.

For a long time, in a previous job, all I worried about was my work. It wasn’t that my job was hard, I just got real anxiety about it. And it brought me so far down, and at that point it seemed everything in my life was about work. I couldn’t switch off at the end of the day, and that made me so stressed. I work somewhere else now, and my attitude is so different. I work there, so that I can go out with friends and buy what I want. I finish work for the weekend, and I can just relax for a few days. And I am so much more relaxed and happy. 

Whether you love or hate your job, you have to be able to ‘switch off’ when you aren’t working. If you can’t relax a little, work could become a bigger issue than it really is. The most important thing to remember is to look after you. Make sure you see the benifits of all your hard work. Because you deserve it.

——-

**Sorry this is a ramble, again. I am still not 100%. I haven’t been sleeping and have an awful cough. Here’s hoping it goes away soon**

Hard Done By

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes people get different opportunities to you. Be it at work or school, if someone gets to do something you’ve had your eye on, it can be hard to accept. It can sometimes feel like you are getting overlooked and certain people are being favoured. We all know the type of person who sucks up to teachers and managers with an aim to get what they want. The people who act best pals with those higher than them, because they think it gives them opportunities. 

I have been thinking about this recently, most because I feel overlooked at work. And when I know I am working hard, it can be difficult to acknowledge that I am not good enough for something. It seems to make it even harder to acknowledge when someone else seems to get everything I am looking for. It just makes me feel sorry for myself, because I am not getting the opertunity to do what I want. And it seems to make work a drag, as I feel under appreciated. And this person, getting what I want, doesn’t seem to be doing anything different to me. So I assume it has to be favouritism that has got this person to where they are. A sense that most people will feel at some time of their lives, usually where there is competition for roles. 

I was working away one day, and was thinking about ‘favouritism’ at work. It is highly likely that it is not a thing that is actually happening, just something in my mind. Because I feel I am working hard I feel I deserve recognition. It’s almost as if someone is getting to do what I want, there must be a reason for it. It’s like my brain won’t accept that I am not suited to a role or that someone else may be better at it than me. I always seem to take things too personal, and think it’s just because a person is friendly with a manager.

This makes me feel guilty, because I don’t want to feel against someone who is just doing their job well. Maybe all I need to do is change the goals I see in front of me. If I can’t get what I want, I should change what I wan to something more achievable for me. And I guess that’s my advice for anyone who ever finds themselves in that situation. You spend a large portion of your life in school or work, and it is a lot of time if you spend your time feeling sorry for yourself because of what others are doing. 

Reasons

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Why do people blog? I have explained many times on here, that I blog for personal reasons. I do it to sort out my mind, and help me feel confident about how I feel. And over the years, it has helped a lot with a lot of personal issues I have had, particularly with my depression. I felt that I couldn’t speak about anything, because it was a negative thing to impose on other people. So I blogged, where it was like speaking outloud, and it helped me. For many periods over the last several years, blogging has been the thing which held me together.

It is strange for me to see something, that I view so personally, seen as a career move for so many people. We live in an age where the Internet and content creation are becoming genuine career paths. There are books and magazines telling people how to start a blog and make it profitable. It paints a very simple picture, write about trendy things, get views, make money. But it isn’t that easy, particularly if you are blogging for the soul purpose of making money. If you don’t believe in what you are writing, you aren’t going to make a connection and you will get none of the precious views you seek.

I just don’t get it. This blog is more about documentation and aiding creativity more than anything else. And that’s the way I’ll always see it. It’s always nice if what I say connects with someone, but it doesn’t drive me. The feeling of achievement I have when I have got something off my mind, and into a blog post, is what drives me. It’s a good feeling, and I have to make the most of those. My brain likes to ignore the positivity, so if I find something that makes me feel good, I will keep at it.

Depression Diaries: Working Away

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Depression is a strange thing to live with. For weeks at a time you can be struggling to even get up in the morning. It never really lifts, but there are days where I can put up with it, and kind of work around it. Days where I feel as normal as I can get. When I don’t feel like crying at all through the day, where I can speak to people without wanting to crawl into a dark corner for wasting their time. But whatever I feel, I do my best to get up and go to work. It’s the one thing I try to promise myself, to go to work, and at least I have achieved something no matter how crap the day ends up. Though I have phoned in sick, it doesn’t happen very regularly.

I work in a warehouse, and by looking at my blog title and things you’d notice that wasn’t my plan. But, needs must, and at least I know I have regular income. Unfortunately, not everyone sees jobs like that. Some people have a snobbish look at jobs that they view as ‘below’ them. And I have people asking me why I’d bother working at a warehouse. They imply that for a person to work there means that there is something wrong with that person. It’s almost like they are saying that a person has to be ‘stupid’ to work in this warehouse, and be content.

This should be an easy comment to brush off, because why should someone else’s opinion matter? But it does. It’s another reason to feel to feel like a failure. Like, it is a basic job, anyone can do it. I don’t add anything to the job, and no one would notice if I wouldn’t go back. My brain goes into this spiral where my thoughts are just berating everything that I do and how everything is just a waste of time. And it is honestly horrible. I have this instilled thought that I just waste people’s time, so just end up spending time alone. And to think that even the medial task of working a basic job is worthless, it just makes me want to hide from everything.

I am writing this after taking some thinking time over how bad attitudes about my job make me feel. I have tried to look around the negative feelings, and find something a bit better. The conclusion that I came to was that everyone expects things to be done for them. Whether you visit a coffee shop for a Mocha or clear out your rubbish bin, there is someone there that makes things happen. Someone makes your coffee, and someone collects all the rubbish to take to refuge. Everything that happens in modern day life happens because someone makes it happen. Even when you do things online, someone makes that dress you order get to your door. People make things happen, and without the people doing the medial tasks, things wouldn’t happen. At all. Every job has a purpose, every person has a purpose. Maybe rather than tearing apart those around us, we should recognise that people do shitty jobs and there is no shame in it. I need to remember that sometime.

Productivity Eliminated!!

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I am always complaining about how unproductive I am. People scoff, as if it is pure laziness causing the problem. But it really is an issue. I am not unproductive in the manner that I sit and do nothing. I am unproductive in the state that I do other things rather than what I am supposed to do. It is like my mind distracts me to do something other than what I have to do. This is a wee list of the stuff that are the main culprits of my distractions.

*Twitter/Tumblr/Youtube: I have lumped these three together because they are all similar as to how they soak up my time. I log on to the site in question, so see if I have any messages, or anything of interest pops up. Which is fine. Except that ‘one thing’ ends up with me checking something else, and then another. And before I know it, I have lost my whole evening. Because social networks are constantly updating, the new influx of information coming constantly, can make it difficult to tear yourself away from the site.

*Finding Things: Tidying up is the worst for me to get distracted from, and it happens all the time. Usually, it comes as I find a magazine, book or newspaper, and I decide to check through it to see if there is anything worth keeping in it. However, rather than skimming, I sit and read the whole thing. I lose my motivation, as I get myself comfortable, and read through everything I can find. And that seems to take priority in my mind, over the washing that is sitting in the piles on my floor. Yeah, not efficient at all.

*’Just One More’: Computer games, TV shows, chapters of a book, it is very easy to say, I’ll do it after this one. I do it, because I seem to think that it will give me motivation. That because I want to play the next fight on Street Fighter, that I’d give myself 10 minutes to clean a bit, play another fight, another 10 minutes. The problem here is one of two things. I either become too involved in what I am doing, that I ‘forget’ to stop. The other is that I am so shit at what I am doing, I don’t actually get to the checkpoint that I have in mind. So never actually clean up.

Reading this back, I think my main problem is making excuses. Ooops!

Just Do It

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

A lot of people seem to believe that good things happen to those who wait. They pray for opportunities and constantly plan for a career that is just a pipe dream.

There is nothing wrong about dreaming for a better life. Hoping for
better can get you through a tough time. But remember if you want something you have to get the wheels in motion YOURSELF. There is no point saying you want to do something, if you are just waiting for things to happen without taking any steps yourself.

Do your self a favour and start making things happen. They more you do, the more things will change.

Panic Stations

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I am a stress head.

When something happens, good or bad, I stress over it. When things get quiet, my brain goes into overload, and it panics over what has been done during the day. I pick over every detail, and worry about what I could have done differently.

When I was at school, I would fall out with friends sometimes. Have petty arguments that lasted one day, like most kids do. I would stay up all night, worrying that I had upset someone by doing something stupid. I was forever apologising for things that didn’t seem to bother the person I was actually apologising to.

My previous job was in a call center, for a customer services department. I took it because I love speaking to people, and wanted to help folk out. But telling loyal customers that there was nothing I could do when they were experiencing times with financial hardship. No discounts, no reconnections, no nothing. And me, being in a bad financial state myself, I sympathised with them. And because I know that I couldn’t help, I lost my confidence. I would go home at night, worrying about these customers that I wasn’t able to help. I would cry in bed, cry on my way to work. I became so stressed that I was of no use to anyone, because I couldn’t even help them when I needed it.  It wore me down, and I fell into self-harming. Something that I hadn’t done in years. It was hard.

I am trying to stop over-analysing everything going on, and that not everything that happens is a direct result of my actions. It is difficult, I still panic if I think I say something wrong to someone. It is hard to change a habit of a lifetime, but it is something that is long over due.

 

Never Enough

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I work best when working through a list. Doesn’t matter what the activity is, I have to structure it out, so that I can get everything done. I panic when I get overwhelmed, so placing things in some sort of methodical order seems to help me not panic.

But, it isn’t just panicking that I do. If I don’t have a list and order to focus on things, I don’t focus very hard at all. I will maybe start something, but my mind will wander, and I will end up doing something else, without finishing my initial task. Which would be okay, if there was only two or three tasks to do, but give me a day of non-focus and I could ‘half do’ around 10-15 different things. And, then I get frustrated. With myself. With the work. With everything. And then nothing further happens.

Sometimes, despite writing lists, I get bored and do something else. If it is something which uses active thought, like blogging, I’m fine. When it is something like doing housework, I just mentally clock out and end up doing something else. I guess I have to just find a way to become more involved in every task that I set out to do. Try not to become distracted.  I feel, that sometimes it is like I need to have someone watching over me, to push me seeing things through to completion.

I guess I sound like a teenager, who thinks that they have better things to do. But it can honestly be very hard to get things done properly. But, one thing has changed from school-age me. I no longer give up on things, if I have had a bad and unproductive day. I just take a deep breath and carry on at the next opportunity, be it the next hour, day or whatever. I take a moment to take in what I haven’t done, but no longer berate myself on my failures. I might have a whine, but I will put my head down and try to work hard round everything.

I guess the important part is never giving up on anything. You only truly fail when you give up.

Howdy Doodie

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I am getting really bad at this update thing. Wish I had a lot more motivation. November is NaNoWriMo, and for the first time in 4 years, I am not even attempting it. The idea is that a person writes a full length novel in the space of a month. As enjoyable as I find the process, I have no motivation what-so-ever. If there is one thing that I hate, it is the thought that I could fail, which would be a certainty.

In my personal life, I am still working away in my temporary job. Money for Christmas, and for things that I have needed for months. It is a relief, that even though I do not have an abundance of money, that I can buy some of what I want. I can pay my way. Which is something that I struggled to do without a job.

I don’t think that I ever appreciated how difficult it is for someone to find employment once they lose a job. I was in constant employment for almost 13 years of my life, and yet I was unemployed for 6 months trying to find a job. I’d hate to see how bad it would have been, if I had never worked. But that is what some people face. With the unhelpful Job Centre staff, it is very easy to lose any hope of finding employment. And I imagine that feeling would get worse and worse, the longer that you were unemployed.

Long story short, I am happy where I am. Yes, it maybe isn’t idea to be working in a warehouse, but for the moment it pays my bills, and everyone there are so nice. I have been cross-trained in another department after under 2 months, which feels great. I feel like I can so something, and that I am useful. Once I force myself out of bed, I am in a great mood going to work. Which is a complete 180 on the sleepless nights I faced at my old job.

But working has me in a good mood. And considering what has happened over the last year, it is great to have my sense of purpose back.

Time Filled With Joy

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Life, is hard. A lot harder than what they told us in school. Which is a strange concept, when every teenager assumes High School is the hardest thing that they will ever experience. The forced human contact with people you don’t like, doing classes you don’t want to and being stopped from visiting the toilet outwith break times. As a student, I always felt victimised when I was at school, and I know I wasn’t alone.

But now, in adulthood, I have gone through many jobs, and realised that my feelings from school were mis-judged. School’s purpose is to teach you what you could use in adulthood. Yes, the subjects may not all relate to adult life, but the structure of High School does. In every job you are going to have to get on with people you don’t like, do jobs you don’t want to do, and work to a strict schedule. That is a part of life, and one of the most important lessons, is to do all this and still be happy.

To keep myself in a positive state of mind, I try to do little things that make me happy, particularly on days where I think I’m going to be stressed. I read a book, play Xbox, write a blog, watch a movie or just have a bath. I try to fill my downtime with things that make me happy. This coping mechanism seems to make everyday life a bit easier to deal with. Which is what life is about, in my point of view. Finding ways to deal with the hard stuff the world can throw at you. Something that helps make working a job you hate, worth it.

So, on this Tuesday evening, I hope that you remember what makes you happy, and go do it. Do it because it makes you smile. Do it because it is fun. Do it because it makes you end a bad day on a high. And do this every day. Maybe different thing on a different day, and don’t let the negativity of your professional situation spoil your life. You deserve to be happy.