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Job Dissatisfaction: any ideas?
shadowleaver
Veteran
For close to a decade I've had a well paid office job in a stable company. I haven't had to work hard there, hardly ever stayed nights and weekends. A lot of the time the management leaves me to my own devices, evidently thinking that I'll occupy myself somehow. There's rarely a push from above or even my peers and I can easily kill hours every day browsing, with hardly anyone noticing. To top it off, it's an engineering job so there is room for creativity and learning if I cared to pursue a task creatively.
Sounds like a dream for most people, especially with it being a crisis right now, right?
Yet for a reason I've been struggling to understand for nearly a decade now, I only enjoy my job for about a quarter of the time, I am deeply miserable for another quarter of the time and for the remaining half of the time, I merely tolerate it. All too often I wake up and intesely desire to head for a long nature walk instead or even get sick-- I just absolutely dread going to that cube. On bad days when I fall asleep I fantasize with longing of never waking up the next day. Like I said, there isn't much pressure on me to make an effort and I rarely feel motivated to do more than is actually asked. A lot of the time I just don't see the point in it, I feel apathetic so I end up just distracting myself. To most people this attitude is plain laziness but for the life of me I just can't shake it off. What in the hell do I need?
Several times I almost committed to changing where I work and that resolve would fill me with energy, strength and confidence. But then my reasoning would go something like this: this Capitalist system is mean, look at the millions of people worried about keeping the roof over their heads, where's the guarantee that I won't end up in poverty if I move, I have a wife and darn it, it's so easy here, why not just suck it up and enjoy my life outside of the office. So I end up doing nothing about my job situation, come to terms with it for a few weeks or months but then I find myself in dispair again and the cycle repeats.
I suppose there must be a great lesson about dukkha hiding somewhere here but I'm at my wit's end to figure out what it is. Is it that I should just let my fear of failure go and more or less jump this ship? Or is it that I am failing to see the root of my suffering and fooling myself into believing that changing the work situation will do anything? I've burned many a neuron agonizing over this. If you've been in a similar situation or have a Buddhist perspective- please share, whatever that might be.
Thank you very much!
Sounds like a dream for most people, especially with it being a crisis right now, right?
Yet for a reason I've been struggling to understand for nearly a decade now, I only enjoy my job for about a quarter of the time, I am deeply miserable for another quarter of the time and for the remaining half of the time, I merely tolerate it. All too often I wake up and intesely desire to head for a long nature walk instead or even get sick-- I just absolutely dread going to that cube. On bad days when I fall asleep I fantasize with longing of never waking up the next day. Like I said, there isn't much pressure on me to make an effort and I rarely feel motivated to do more than is actually asked. A lot of the time I just don't see the point in it, I feel apathetic so I end up just distracting myself. To most people this attitude is plain laziness but for the life of me I just can't shake it off. What in the hell do I need?
Several times I almost committed to changing where I work and that resolve would fill me with energy, strength and confidence. But then my reasoning would go something like this: this Capitalist system is mean, look at the millions of people worried about keeping the roof over their heads, where's the guarantee that I won't end up in poverty if I move, I have a wife and darn it, it's so easy here, why not just suck it up and enjoy my life outside of the office. So I end up doing nothing about my job situation, come to terms with it for a few weeks or months but then I find myself in dispair again and the cycle repeats.
I suppose there must be a great lesson about dukkha hiding somewhere here but I'm at my wit's end to figure out what it is. Is it that I should just let my fear of failure go and more or less jump this ship? Or is it that I am failing to see the root of my suffering and fooling myself into believing that changing the work situation will do anything? I've burned many a neuron agonizing over this. If you've been in a similar situation or have a Buddhist perspective- please share, whatever that might be.
Thank you very much!
0
Comments
This may take you some time, and it very likely won't be easy. But I know in my own case, when I finally did figure it out, doors magically opened, and things flowed as if designed to from the start.
Good luck with your journey!
Mtns
PS: It's never too late - I started nursing school when I was 42, and am about to start grad school at 48...
Any way to move the partitions, etc.?
Things could definitely be several times worse, seems to me...
Sounds like the perfect balance to me!
All joking aside...I want to say I have a similar issue, except in my case I haven't even started my job yet. (I start on Monday.) It's similar though, a well paid software development position at a stable company. I have often worried that as much as I enjoy programming and working on projects, and really the whole environment, I will feel dissatisfied due to lack of meaning. I have a feeling that maybe this is your issue as well, or at least part of it, because you mentioned that you don't see the meaning behind what you're doing.
Here's what I've come up with. It doesn't matter if I take this job or some other job, or if I change fields completely. In life, it's not the decisions we make that are most important--it's what we do with them. Sure you can try changing jobs. Maybe it'll be great, but most likely you'll run into the same issues you are having now. There's this quote I like, and I don't remember where I heard it. "Wherever I go, there I am!" Meaning we can't escape ourselves, and as hard as we try to arrange life in such a way that will make us happy, somehow the same problems keep popping up again and again until we stand our ground and face them.
Ask yourself, what kind of meaning are you are looking for? What kind of a job would feel more meaningful to you? What kind of a life would feel more meaningful to you?
In my case, I couldn't come up with any answers, really. Maybe that's because the goal is the path, and the path is the goal. It's not what we do, it's how we do it.
I don't know what work will be like. Maybe I'll eat my words, lol, but I plan on giving it my best effort and making good relationships and being kind. And most of all finding things to enjoy about it.
Here's another saying, by Ajahn Chah: "Joy at last! To know there is no happiness in the world!" There's something so freeing about that statement. There's no where to go, nothing to do, because none of it will make us any happier than we can be right here and now.
Best of luck!
nearly a year ago i moved to a new city with no job, just a hope i would find one easily. well, that didn't really happen and months went on until finally... i sucked it up and accepted a low paying position for a company i had already worked for in the past. at this time i thought, "any job is a good job." this mentality went on for a while, but lately, i've gotten to the same point that drove me to quit this job in the first place! haha.
however, this time i am a little older and a little wiser. i have found that if i make effort to enter the day with happiness and meditate while at work that i find my day much more pleasurable. perhaps it is just the nature of the mind to grow bored and feel stifled. you said yourself that you spend a great deal of time browsing, why not meditate instead? i'm not saying that you shouldn't pursue your dreams if there is something that calls to you, but what i am saying is that for now... you're here, why not make the best of it?
You set your dreams on darkened shelves
and shone the light upon yourselves
and sat and watched and waited til the morning.
You caught up to the sliding ledge,
you stood your ground and you made your pledge,
to the moment, to the breathing Hallelujah.
Meaning...well in the context of the song anyway, it's like giving up on that dream of finding a partner that will make you feel true and lasting happiness. Set your dreams aside because they aren't as important as the moment, "the breathing Hallelujah." So in your case, it would be giving up on the dream of whatever life you want to live in exchange for enjoying the life you already have.
Uhh I don't really know if that was worth adding...but I feel like only in a Buddhist context can some of my lyrics be understood, haha. And for me, having lyrics to remind me of important things really helps in every day life.
My job is a particularly degrading service position, and for a long time I was very miserable about it. It wasn't until I changed my perspective that I was able to find meaning in an otherwise depressing work environment.
One thing that really helped me is an excerpt from Ven. Thubten Chodron's webpage:
While you are at work, remember the kindness of the other sentient beings who gave you the job and who make it possible for you to earn a living. Thinking in this way helps to avoid generating negative emotions such as anger at work.
LOL, you made my day!
Alas, I don't have the slightest clue. Well, I think I'd enjoy being a bicycle mailman as I love being outdoors alone
Glad you found your path, though!
If you have that much time on your hands you could do some serious Buddhist study. I mean, if no one bothers you.
There's always going to be someone happier than you or less happy than you.
Maybe get one of those little electric Zen rock fountains for your desk?
Note, I'm not criticising you. However, your employers may genuinely think they are challenging you enough if you don't tell them otherwise.
I think I hear what you're saying, that you can't find a real reason that you are unhappy, dissatisfied with your present situation, and wonder if there is something you can do to switch it up that might take away that 3/4 of the time when you are either miserable or just tolerant. I can also appreciate how this might appear as laziness, but you don't feel that relates, because you don't mind working hard.
What I see is that you're probably in the right job, but have the wrong approach. You sound as though you are looking to the work to satisfy you, which means that when it does, you're happy, and when it doesn't, you're depressed. What a terrible situation that must be! This makes your state of being directly connected to the external environment.
Perhaps consider that expecting your job to fulfill you is akin to looking for a partner to fulfill your needs. Its not an ideal connection... better to become satisfied in your own mind, and bring that satisfaction to the table. Imagine if you said "every time it is sunny, I am happy, and every time it rains I am sad". The right intention might be to discover how your emotions are attached to the environment, and how are you planting the seeds of this deep dissatisfaction. It wouldn't be ideal to say "I need to find a spot where it is always sunny".
I see two main areas of potential study in this regard. The first is that you appear to me to be considering this job as "my job, I do it for money, it is what I do to get by" etc. This is undoubtedly a source of your apathy. Contrast that statement with "I have been given an opportunity to put my skills to the use of humankind." In regarding your work as an opportunity to help others, you will recalibrate your view to accept that your moments of work are important, because they are your contribution toward the greater collective.
The other thing you said is that you only have to work a small part of the time, and the rest of the time you can get by without being bothered. I wonder, perhaps your dissatisfaction is caused by your browsing and goofing off, rather than an expression of it. Normally, when we are in our groove, and we are working hard at our trade, time stands still, we remain invigorated even when we are tired, and have a natural buoyancy that keeps our mind clear and alert.
I wonder, do you meditate? Do you participate in any regular dharma talks or have a teacher? Often, these kinds of patterns will unlock naturally as we practice meditation, and become especially obvious when we engage with a teacher.
With warmth,
Matt
I think I would have to pinch myself to wake up if I had a job where I could actually set time aside to meditate (sitting, that is)!