there is always a solution: leave and claim benefits. Got the vodka down yer neck, then lets go racing ;-) Or bring mrs K down for a weekend at chez Bradbury
Last year was a nightmare for me, rediculous work load, masses of traveling and staying away from home all week with a pregnant wife left on her own at home. I nearly cracked before i managed to stumble onto the job im doing now. I now work for a company who appreciate me, close to home, for more money with less hours! Its heaven! The right job will be out there for you mate, you are clearly not happy now so maybe its time to move on?
There's just jelly and a safety match. No matchboxes. No refrigeration. Nothing. Is that so hard to understand? :tongue:
This ones doing my head in Anyway back in topic - hope you sort your shit out Cranker , starting this post and venting feelings is the first step in the right direction Ps I had a shite nights sleep and woke with a headache and they've given me someone else's work to do today I may have to go home early with a bout of fuckyouitus
The task: Strike a safety match on some jelly. The problem: You can't strike a match on jelly. The solution: Stop trying. I said there was a solution to every problem, not a solution to every task. It's all about your own perspective
as in,, you can only do what you can do. life's to short. in my lie of work tho there is no such thing as cant.
You never set the conditions at the beginning. You cant just go along making up the conditions as you please and dropping them like a bombshell. Wait a minute....are you my Director?
CrankerV2 - I can really empathise. I was in a similar position 6 years ago - project from hell, impossible deadlines, indecisive clients, a line manager who just didn't get how bad things were, 12 hour days in the office plus over 3 hour round trip commute, working weekends as well, not sleeping, headaches, feeling a visceral knot of dread in my gut when walking from the station to work. I was stressed, not ill - I didn't take any time off "off sick". I knew that a couple of days, or even a couple of weeks or couple of months away wasn't the answer, as the project would still be there on my return, only with even less time to do it. I had to get out and get out properly. I took a career break - was lucky that my large public sector employer let me get out while leaving the door open for a possible return, but if they hadn't, I'd have just handed in my notice and been gone for good. The day I handed in my application to get out, my colleagues said there was a visible difference in me, like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I signed up with a bunch of temp agencies with an open mind, and said send me wherever to do admin work. Pay was rubbish, but I had some eye opening and enjoyable experiences working for organisations I'd have never specifically applied to (financial advisers, the Army ...) I did go back to my former career after 18 months or so away. Did another couple of years in a different office with a great boss and interesting variety of work, but my heart wasn't in it any more. So, I'm now 2 1/2 years after a career change, working for one of the companies I'd previously temped with, doing a job for which in some ways I'm woefully over qualified, but which doesn't drive me insane, where I feel at the end of each day I've done my best and that that's good enough, rather than always feeling there's more I could or should have done, and which involves around 1 hour motorcycle round trip commute, not flogging into London on the train. I realise I'm lucky, having a supportive other half, and not the same extensive financial commitments which might leave you feeling trapped in your current situation, but honestly, sometimes the price of a well paid job is too high. Who on their deathbed ever says "my one regret is not spending more time in the office"? Good luck, whatever you decide to do.
What always amazes me is the crappy lifestyles people put up with just to be able to do a stressful no-fun job that pays well. What is the point of the money, I ask myself? Social status? Probably. People have to do long commutes or live in naff uninteresting places just to do "the job". I don't get it. Then they have to spend a large portion of their income paying for all the things they don't have time to do, like frequent restaurant meals and ready meals because they don't have the time or energy to shop and cook. In fact the job often sucks up all your creativity too - sometimes almost your entire life. People are so busy in the hamster wheel they can't see the futility of the endless scurrying.
It's all very subjective isn't it. I'm willing to be shot at, as long as they don't hit me , to be threatened with IEDs, face the threat of an insider attack on a daily basis. I'm happy to be restricted in when and what I can eat, to not see my family for months at a time, to live in a tent with a bunch of other blokes and to spend most of my time either freezing cold or boiling hot. I do all of those things with a smile on my face, but if you asked me to sit in an office and type on a computer all day long, submitting pointless reports for people that pile on pressure to hit targets that mean nothing in the universe that exists outside of that office, I think I would last 1 month before I would have to kill myself or someone else. It sounds horrendous and I don't know how people can live like that. Especially in the pompous city where everyone is angry, unsociable, frightened and the housing is expensive and crap. You spend your whole life pushing buttons to make some one else money and have the privilege of feeling awful for it. F**k that. I'd rather be poor and happy than have a high paid job and be a faceless automaton. But that's just my view, I suspect some people would detest my job and it's more obvious lack of freedoms.
Unfortunately shit costs money, lots of money. House, kids, more more kids, Christmas, holidays, more kids, car(s), needy wife and more kids. I'm sure if making clay pots for tourists outside of ones fantasy Devon-shire cottage paid the same as beasting your way into the smoke each morning people would be doing it. Clearly one needs balance, but reality can kinda suck!
Sometimes all the shit just grows without you noticing. Then one day it all becomes clear. No one ever plans it. It just happens a small bit at a time. I'm planning an out. But I've still not got past the start. I, like others, have a mortgage to think about.
