Worklife

Getting your work life in order

There’s three types of working people: Specimen A, B & C

Specimen A is someone who works a single job in their life, never having known anything other than their field of specialty.

Specimen B on the other hand switches jobs like there’s no tomorrow, having worked as a gas station attendee to a land mine collector in Burma. Why Burma? I have no idea, it came subconsciously. I don’t even know if there’s any old minefield around in the country, but I thought it sounded funnier. I’m too lazy to open up google and fact check, those 14 seconds would cost me a years of sanity that I cannot compensate with my ignorance. Okay, not even my ignorance wants to, we’re both lazy. I blame it Wednesday, I just have to. Someone else needs to take the blame other than me for once, so it’s going to be this random ass week of the day. Monday has been already depressed for years because of Jim Davis, poor fella needs a break. But we’re not here to talk about him.

It’s me, your friendly neighborhood Specimen C! Specimen C are a weird bunch, we don’t fully commit to anything, but we also don’t stray too far into things. We’ve had more than one job, but not more than a handful. What I’m trying to say is, that we work in a single field for a couple of years, then as if we’ve contracted some sort of disease, we change to a completely different one, never looking back at it. Maybe we’re traumatized, could be that it’s just a form of inner disgust we feel by continuing the same profession at a different company. I can’t tell you the reason, but it’s like we’re always on the run, trying to get away from our past experiences.

Hell, maybe we just get bored of having done something once. I’m not sure why, but there’s no amount of money that could make me even consider continuing a craft that I’ve left behind. My brain instantly goes into denial mode, painting capital ‘NO’ onto an imaginary canvas. It’s definitely a mental thing.

I’m currently on my 6th deck of playing cards, having potentially found one that could stick with me for a very long while. After years of mostly getting my ass kicked by jobs where I was forced to act like everything was alright and smile with the brightest grin on my face, I can say that I’m finally able to be myself at the work place, without having a single moment of untruth persona. It’s honestly extremely ridiculous that it took me almost half of my life to get to a point where this is possible, let alone feel like I could potentially be happy.

No more rushes. No more 12+ hour shifts. No more 2 hour travels just to be able to work. No more ‘solve the problem yourself’. No more jumping around with schedules. No late changes, deceptions, barrage of idiots you cannot rid yourself. But finally someplace decent.

And I’m only saying decent, as that’s what it is. It’s not great, but not bad either, certainly better than a lot. Sure, there’s problems (where isn’t one?), the pay isn’t exceptional, but the work itself is nice, the atmosphere is great, and I’m finally rid of ever having to work on a weekend or a holiday. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Not what I imagined, but definitely better than what I had in mind. In fact, I count myself lucky I ever landed this gig, as I was having trouble finding work a couple of months prior.

However, there’s one key thing that could elevate it’s status: the lack of stress. My previous jobs, as stated before, were quite a handful, filled with anxiety. So much so that they did a number on me, and affected my health, despite me having always claimed that I can handle a large amount of stress. Well, even if I think I can, my stomach can’t. As embarrassing as it is, there came a long period in my life where I couldn’t just simply leave the house. If I knew I had to leave, I knew I had to visit the bathroom. Multiple times. Whenever I went outside, I’ve made plans for potential toilet stops “just in case” I had to go. And I always had to, no exceptions. In movies it’s always funny when some idiot has stomach cramps, and tries to find a location where he can relieve himself, but believe me, dealing with that on a daily basis and being said idiot is anything but fun.

At first I chalked it up as part of traveling and having motion sickness or the sort. But it happened way too frequent for that, even during times of lull, where I was at the same location for multiple hours. It wasn’t until much later, that someone pointed it out to me, that there’s a different underlying issue at hand. Irritable bowel syndrome, or as the wiki article also refers to it: “disorder of gut-brain interaction”, which frankly is a much more meaningful name.

IBS is the literal form of shitting yourself because you worry too much. You might think you don’t, you might think you have a handle on the situation, but nope, you can’t trick your own body. You have crap that you need to sort out, both figuratively and literally.

It doesn’t take a Mensa level genius to connect a change in bodily function to a change in work environment, when they both started at around the same time. Yet, it took me years and some talks to realize that this could be the potential reason for my own problems. But even then, I couldn’t do anything about it for a long while, especially in today’s world, where they give out stress and anxiety hand in hand, every time you turn on the TV, connect to the internet, go outside or simply talk to people.

Then I’ve got this job and because of some magical pixie dust called ‘stress free zone’ it all stopped. It was so sudden that I immediately thought something was wrong with me, after all: I had been living with this issue for a multitude of years as the norm. And you’re telling it’s gone, just like that?

Yes, “just like that”. It’s such an odd thing to even type down, but it really was that “simple”. Get a job that doesn’t treat you like utter shit, and you won’t overproduce it. Who would have thought?

So here I am now, being able to go wherever and whenever. Time to make the best of it.