Image by Grae Dickason from Pixabay
This poem describes very well how I felt about being in the Employee Mindset for nearly 40 years. The line "grey upon greyness" is particularly evocative.
That's exactly how I feel about the Life of an Employee working a J.O.B., which I did from the time I was 16 years old until this year when my disabilities knocked me out of the working life for good. (I'm 54 now and am working from home.)
There were some things about the jobs I did that I liked, but, overall, it was an extremely soul-destroying situation. I absolutely felt like I had to give up bits of myself all the time.
I certainly don't like living in poverty, which I am at this point. However, one thing is true which it never was when I was working a J.O.B. (stands for Just Over Broke). I am really and truly myself, not someone else's servant. On a soul level, that is tremendously freeing.
~Cie~
Disability forced me out of paid employment before I was ready. I discovered I had been defining myself by what I did.
ReplyDeleteI loathed office politics and some of the staff, but loved what I did.
More than twenty years later I am very, very happy to have escaped.
Same here. I worked in the medical field for years, and I most certainly defined myself in terms of my job. I tend to have bouts of suicide ideation anyway, but I was suicidal for close to a year after I got fired from my job as a homecare nurse in March of 2017. The incident where I fell asleep on the job was the beginning of the end.
DeleteThing is, my employer sure as hell didn't help. I contracted a serious respiratory infection from the patient I was taking care of, and my coordinator guilt-tripped me by saying that the family really needed me and since I had caught the illness from that patient, it wasn't like I could re-infect him. I was beyond exhausted from working 60 hour weeks, and I hadn't started using insulin for my diabetes yet. I had a TIA (small stroke) and was unconscious for a good 20 minutes. When I regained consciousness I saw the patient's father sitting on the bed, glaring at me. I knew what my fate was. There was no sympathy whatsoever.
I was proud of the work I did, but I really don't miss the hours one single bit.