On Employment 15.01.25

I have reached my least favourite point of the day. 30 minutes before lunch. It is immensely quiet in this building today, and I keep reaching for my phone, tapping it, watching the empty screen until it goes dark, and repeating the process every 2 minutes. Boredom is incessant. I have the phrase ‘I’m bored. I am the chairman of the bored’ circling around my head like bluebirds in a Tom and Jerry episode. However, at the very same time, I am praying it doesn’t get any busier as that will require me to participate in a likely irritating task. It’s not a thrilling place to be.

Employment is a Catch 22. Where it is so catastrophically boring, I pray for a modicum of interest, some interaction, a task for Christ’s sake. Give me something to file I don’t care. However, at the very same time exists in me a heels dragging in the dirt, emergency stop, no way am I doing that monster, and I outright beg that nobody asks anything of me.

My most recent attempt to inject some difference into my day is to follow roughly 7 ‘Learn insert language here quickly’ podcasts and play them on a loop. I have even revived my Duolingo in a spirited attempt to stave off boredom and prepare for any future escape plans or employment abroad. It’s a good thing to evade the mind-numbing ambivalence with, replacing it with something practical, However, it’s not a perfect plan, as I get worried that a task will present itself or someone will notice I am skiving. If my head being trained firmly at the desk isn’t an indication I’m avoiding work, my whispering ‘Where is the Hospital’ in broken French is a dead giveaway.

Part of me is beginning to wonder whether this is just what employment is like. Like, I find myself constantly asking, is this it? Wherever I go, will I just be met with this soul sucking indifference because the framework of get up, go to work, go home, eat, sleep, shit, repeat, is a part of most jobs. I feel like when I was working in like bit-part jobs in Uni, that I imagined there was something better out there. And so I ask again, is this it? Granted, I was only working a few days a week on a shop floor, doing everything I could to avoid being put on the till and taking any opportunity to hide in a store cupboard, so it was very easy to imagine there was something else out there for me. Rather than now where I am heading towards the end of my 20s without any real direction and a CV that is rather long and rather variable.

But what is it that I crave, and how do I find it? I am worried that employers will look at my history of employment, clock that I never stay anywhere for longer than a year, and go, ‘unreliable’. I assure you, I am very reliable, if you give me stuff to work with. Give me a task, and I will do everything within my earthly power to get it done. The problem is that after about 6 months the novelty of a new role wears off, and I am left with the realization that I am woefully indifferent to the tasks I am set. The shiny novelty of ‘Ooo new skill!’ has be left by the wayside, and I seem to become very ‘been there, done that’ about the whole thing. Which is mad as I have, will, and do listen to the same song on repeat for weeks on end without getting tired of it. My most recent jobs have ended in mostly the same way either I panic and quit, or panic and jump ship into another role that will inevitably follow the same pattern.

And I suppose I am asking; will every job be like this? Do I have to accept that it will be boring after 6 months and I will no longer want to do it…but have to keep doing it as no matter where I work will feel this way? Again, is this it?

In an attempt to be minorly more positive about the whole employment-in-order-to-survive-even-though-it-is-usually-crap thing, what I will say is that this role comes with a salary rather than an hourly wage, which is rather nice. After years of claiming I will never centre my life around the pursuit of a higher salary, I have all of a sudden become very money-hungry. This may have something to do with being in the process of buying a house, where you are forced to face how truly skint you are in a very real way. I suppose it is also a symptom of living in a capitalist society. In that you are told that money makes the world go round at a young age. If you’re like me you then go through a phase of rejecting this, before being sent out into the world and realising everything is very expensive and requires money in order to participate. I have come to firmly believe that if I am to be happy, I require money with which to pay for trips and croissants without worry. That’s the part of happiness that money can buy, security. It can provide a baseline that allows for mundane things like bills, lifesaving things like medication, and general like ability to fix a leak and still comfortably put 3 meals on the table for the whole month. If all of this is taken care of, and you even have money left over, that is unimaginably satisfying. It means you can get a coffee, or hop on a short train to the beach, or even like buy a record or pair of shoes and not feel the guilt of thinking you should have saved that.  

All of this is to say that to me in my current predicament, the thought of a steady drip of tasks in employment is both welcome, and abhorrent. I suppose I should be looking for something that will pay me the same, if not more than what I have now, while also providing the mental stimulation I crave. Just something different in my day, that will not require me to work myself to the bone for a salary I never have time to spend. I haven’t much of an idea of what I want to do really, I know I don’t want to work in Customer-facing roles anymore, I have had quite enough of that. Maybe something that won’t have me on the verge of panic quitting every day and legging it via any transportation to the opposite side of the globe. Or maybe a role that embraces this trait, but without the panic so much.

Playlist:

'Rich and Shameless: Girls Gone Wild' episode of True Crime Obsessed podcast

'I'm Bored' by Iggy Pop

'A Certain Romance' by Arctic Monkeys