Don’t worry about a thing (worry about them all)

I have a lot of thoughts today so this is going to be a bit more of a brain dump than usual. I’m torn between worrying about being #foreveralone, the impending climate change crisis, the impending health crisis, what the hell is happening with Russia, the general state of social affairs in the United States, and what the frack should I be doing with my life since I absolutely can’t see myself sitting in the same cube for the next 40 years. Slight exaggeration, I will most definitely get a new cube within 40 years because I am a consultant and we don’t stick around on one gig THAT long. You know what I mean.

Don’t get me wrong, at the end of the day I am more grateful for what I do have going for me than I am overwhelmed by all the uncertainties in life. I know this state of anxiety will pass. That doesn’t mean I can’t bitch about it a little in the meantime, though. Catharsis is good, right?

It’s not that I have a fear of getting “stuck”. I know with some certainty that I have the option to quit, to apply for a different job, to go back to school if I wanted to, or to choose any of the other paths available to me. That’s really the problem, though. What I’m really terrible at when it comes to work is commitment and patience, since I know there are other choices. I’ve made a promise to myself that I’d stay where I am (work-wise, I’m not planning on literally moving any time soon) until at least November of this year. Here we are, though, only 78 days into 2018 and I’m already struggling to believe I can stick with it until I reach my goal.

I’m a serial quitter. Usually it’s worked out to my benefit – new job, new experiences, new places, whatever – and I’m the type to find something good about whatever choice I make so I can’t really say I regret any of my choices to quit. That being said, I think I need to practice being a bit more present and stop looking to the future so much. When I can see the finish line, I’m already quitting mentally. It’s like when you put in your two weeks or you’ve finished your finals and now you’re just waiting until you can go. Are you really putting in your best effort? No, because you know there’s a new chapter waiting for you.

For me, I can almost always see the finish line, though, which makes things a bit more difficult than I’d like. Granted, it takes awhile before that particular finish line might seem attractive to me—I mean, I don’t automatically start a new job assuming I’ll quit. I usually have a general idea of what I want in life and I know my stepping-stones to that ideal, is all. For example, I know I want to move closer to my parents one day. That means I know my time in the Northeast will eventually come to an end, though right now I’m enjoying where I live and have no desire to move. On the other hand, I know I want to find a career that I think is meaningful and fulfilling and that makes me feel valued and productive. Right now, I don’t have that so I have lots of desire to quit even though I know it’s not the right time yet. “When is it ever the right time?” you might ask. When my retirement matching is vested this November, I say.

Okay, back to the point. I have a goal and I know what I’m doing now isn’t helping me fulfill that, but I also know it’s too early to make a (big) change. So now I’m feeling guilty because I’m not trying my best in my current role but I’m also struggling to want to try my best because, frankly, I hate it. I have some options available to me (that don’t involve quitting) but they all carry an unknown amount of risk. I’ll find out a little bit more about that mid-April, but I need a short-term way of coping until then.

Ideally, I’d find a way to take my mind off of the fact that I know this job isn’t going to end up being my Career and focus on what I can actually learn from it. That’s a bit of a battle in and of itself, since one of my beefs with this project is that it’s a tiny group and we never actually work together so I don’t really have an opportunity to “learn from my peers” as I would usually do in this situation. I wouldn’t feel too guilty focusing on personal development that is relevant to the role but, because I already know it isn’t for me, I’m not sure if that’s the best route to take.

I could probably get something useful out of it, though, since my role is applicable to most industries and it’s not bad to at least know about it even if I don’t actually want to do it myself. We’ll give that a shot again tomorrow, but I’ve tried this already and found it to be insufferably boring. So, inevitably what happens when I get terribly bored is that I distract myself with the other things that I feel strongly about. Those things also happen to give me lots of anxiety, though, so this isn’t a great technique. I did reach a semblance of calm researching courses and degrees in agricultural science (now I know I have the option to study in Melbourne, yay!), however, so it wasn’t all that bad.

That ended up being a tad more cohesively about my job stress than I thought it would. See, this is why they (They) tell you to write down your feelings. Sometimes, catharsis is helpful and you’re not just another whiney millennial, you’re a whiney millennial with a point. The point being, jobs (especially when you don’t like them) are stressful! And quitting is good! But not when retirement money is at stake. And the environment is dying! But not quite yet. Learning how to farm is probably a good back-up plan and potentially something to do until you quit your day job.