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Stress from having a job
in Philosophy
I'm 19 and have three years clean from drugs. I've come close to relapsing twice this week, for the first time in years. The relapse I would have had would not have just been a momentary escape in a high, it would have ideally ended in overdose. I am trying to come to terms with the fact that life is deep suffering. Being an adult means walking through the flames, rather than avoiding them. I am talking about working hard. At a job or at school. I am enrolled part time in community college and working full time. I am telling myself that life will be easy if I could just go to school full time and not work at all. I am guessing that this is not true. What I want is to have only free time to pursue martial arts, buddhist studies and running. I had a period of a few weeks after I quit my last job, where that was my daily life, along with applying for work. It was an amazing time. But life was not meant to be all fun, life is suffering. Now I work again and do not have time or energy to do much else. So I know suicide as a means of escaping my problem of dealing with hard work is immature. How do you all handle it? Having a full time job, I mean.
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It's no easier or less stressful than working, it's just a different kind of stress.
That's been my experience, anyway.
I don't know if this is helpful to you or not, I just wanted to give you a look at life from the other side, too (the grass isn't always greener)
Frankly, it's sort of like the old highway construction signs you'd see -- temporary inconvenience, permanent improvement. You have to decide if you want to make those temporary inconveniences. I can only tell you that on the plus side, the further I went in my education, the more and better job opportunities that opened up for me, the higher salaries I was able to command, and now, the retirement benefits I receive are a third higher each month than if I had remained only with a Bachelors degree.
It's one of those issues where you have to ask yourself what sacrifices -- temporarily -- are you willing to make, for what goals -- long-term -- are you seeking. But there's no doubt, something's gotta give for everyone on that path.
I'm having a kitchen remodel job done, and I was chatting with the workers for a bit. One said that he once enjoyed manual labor, but now that he is approaching 50, everyday is a physical challenge for him and he wishes he had gone to college...and then he added that he would certainly be making more money, too.
Try to look at it as an investment in your own future.
vinlyn: I have a long term goal of becoming a psychiatrist. I am currently delivering pizzas, and I've got a long way to go academically. I guess there's really no way around it, hard work is necessary to achieve my goal. How do you think I can develop proper coping skills to deal with this?
Coping skills. Well, there's meditating and mindfulness. Also, try to enjoy everything. It might help you to get good at mindfulness.
I look back at my practise and think, oh, if I'd just given in and let myself enjoy life, I wouldn't have had to spend so long wondering what anatta means and so on. 'cause you'll have to give in eventually. Listen to jagged little pill really loud
p.s. I know it sucks. It won't always.
I do keep pretty busy. I have a household to run and I have a lot of hobbies. The stress isn't really boredom (though I do get that from time to time) it's more guilt than anything. I feel bad that I'm not contributing to my household in the way that I'd like to. I also really don't like the "household" stuff. I wasn't made to be a housewife
I also have horribly expensive taste and would like to have enough money to buy all the crap I want. And I don't mind working for that. I know the kind of lifestyle that I'd like, and it involves a lot of hard work.
I'm just much happier when I'm working. I feel more worthwhile, and I like knowing that I've earned the things I have.
I used to be a drug addict, too. I lived well below the poverty line and refused to work for about a year (I wanted to do other things, even after I cleaned up I figured I had better things to do with my time) and it was shit. It was completely shit. I was hungry, I couldn't afford to heat my apartment, I had to wash my clothes in the sink, my shoes had holes in the bottom, my apartment was moldy... The list of crap is pretty much endless.
Nope, not working is definitely not for me
We have enough money now, which is really nice. We don't go hungry, we live well above the poverty line and I can buy nice things from time to time, but none of it was on my back. It's all my husband. And now I want to give something back.
Make that your goal. Find what that is in your life.
Make good habits.
Practice whenever you can. Study.
Eventually you will find that there is no distinction between study, practice and life.
Everything is workable, you just need to give the space for it to be workable.
For me, I found that part of the key to surviving it all, was keeping busy. That probably sounds crazy because how can you NOT be busy going to school and working? But the down times were the times I felt sorry for myself and the more crazy busy I was, I didn't have the time to have pity parties.
Also, if you continue to keep in mind at 19, that life is going to work and hating it, then that is what you'll do. A full time job and responsibility doesn't have to be miserable suffering if you choose wisely how to spend your working time. That doesn't mean it won't be hard, won't sometimes be stressful and that you will love going to work every day. But you don't have to succumb to the "Great, I'll be working the next 40 years waiting to retire to enjoy my life." For some people, they can plow through with the future in mind. My dad is like that. He worked a job he didn't like for 30 years and retired at the age of 49. He has been retired for 12 years now and lives the life he wants, and loves every second of it, knowing his hard work paved the way for him to live well, now. My husband is also like that. But for most of us that time is passed (in our current economy and working world), and being able to start a job at 19, work for the same employer for 30 years and then retire, is pretty hard to accomplish. But it doesn't have to mean a life of drudgery, either.
Then you have people who don't care if they make much money but want to enjoy what they spend their time doing, and that is more how I am. I have spent a lot of years of my relatively young life working jobs I don't like, taking time away from enjoying my family and my children, and I refuse to do it anymore because I don't have to. I refuse to believe that the only answer to life is to spend all your good years working, and retiring only to spend those years making up for the ill health you now have after being stressed out and working too hard. Too many people I know are on that path, far past the age they should have retired. I would rather live in a tiny house with an old car and hand me downs and thrift store buys and be able to live my life on my terms, than to have a high hour, high stress, high pay job to pay for the big house, new car, and expensive vacations that I spend too much time working during to even enjoy. That kind of life sounds like the biggest form of torture to me, yet so many people live it. I don't get it.
Wow, sorry to be so wordy! I certainly wish you the best. It's not easy, and a lot of us have been in your place. But we're still here, and can tell you that it does end, it does work out, and you will be ok.
But if you have your long term goal, then start breaking up the process into smaller pieces, and you will see it's achievable.
I'm in A.A., we break up those pieces into one-day-bite-sizes. Sure, we have to plan for our future, but once the planning is done, keep your thoughts in the day, and try to live each day as best we can.
And since this is a Buddhist forum, you live each day - as best as you can - moment by moment. It's a practise; we will get it constantly wrong and keep on jumping into the future and worrying; and then we keep on bringing it back. Just like what we do when we meditate.
Be very careful of the cognitive self-statements you give yourself .. they "program" your unconscious, and become self-fulfilling. I find it useful to remind myself that happiness is a decision. When I get tired of being a work-slave ... I remind myself that it is only unpleasant because I choose to see it that way. Maybe someone, poor and homeless and starving for years, would be ecstatic to do the same job that I only want to get away from. The only difference is between my attitude and theirs .. the job itself remains the same.
And get away to do WHAT? To indulge myself in my pleasures, to do what I want when I want, instead of doing what my employer wants when they want it. This is not the direction of Buddhism, this thinking that happiness comes from getting what we want and avoiding what we do not want.
In truth, it is our very aversions and attachments that are the true cause of our dissatisfaction. Just observe inside yourself .. the desire arises to go for a run, but you are "on the clock" at work and can't ... then watch how your thoughts and emotions react. This is when you start to see that, really, our dissatisfaction comes from saying that things HAVE to be a certain way or we will not be happy.
Our drive to go after we want is a basic lack of understanding. The 1st Noble Truth of the "Four Noble Truths" is that suffering DOES exist. It's a fact of life. Buddha said so. Yet somehow, we persist in thinking that even though this is a fact of life, for some reason WE some be exempt from it. I STILL make that error!
The 2nd Noble Truth is that suffering has a cause ... that it is our desire and aversion that causes our suffering. We need to be investigators, to observe our inner workings, and see if this is so.
And the 3rd goes on to say that since there is a cause, there is a solution ... the 4th says the solution is Buddhism.
The 4th Noble Truth doesn't tell us that the way to become free from suffering is to get what we want and avoid what we want. This is very very difficult for us to wrap our head around. I keep on getting snagged and pulled back by my preferences.
Pema Chodron challenges us to think back on our life, and ask, "Was there EVER any time when getting what we wanted made us permanently happy?" No? Obviously then, this is not the solution to becoming happy with life.
Looking back on your OP, it seems like you are saying I like these things, so I want to do them all the time; and I don't like these other things, so I don't want to do them at all.
When I was a teenager through college, I worked in a grocery store. Was it what I always wanted to do? No. But I basically liked it, liked the people I worked with (for the most part), and liked interacting with the customers.
Part of that experience overlapped with college. Did I like every course? No. But I looked at each one as a challenge and a step in the ultimate direction I wanted to go.
And so on. And I think that is what FF is speaking of when he talks about living in the moment.
When I'm finished I think about becoming a monk, perhaps that could be something for you to consider as well.
If we look at everything we need/plan to do at once, we can become burdened by a future that is all in our minds. To remain focused and concentrated on what we are doing at that moment is to drop the stress of carrying the future.
Be compassionate to yourself. You just said that you were happy when you were in between jobs. That's your body sending you a signal. Don't overthink it, listen to your body as ultimately it aways wins. Addictions rearing their ugly head could be its way of telling you "enough". You have to find time for relaxation, even if a little.
Don't be a deadbeat. It seems like all fun and games, but two years of beating myself up (I'm not good enough, I'm not skilled enough, I didn't learn well enough, it's all my fault, people are looking at me, judging me.) those kind of thoughts... years of that? it's poison.
TL;DR - The Grass is Always Greener, isn't it?
I was in a very similar situation and I am 21, please I know I can have an asshole tone no matter how hard I try not to and if it isn't an asshole tone, it will be mistaken as a sarcastic tone, but please do not resort to suicide, please don't even think about it as even an option... Good luck to you...