Feeling Kind of Bummed Out...Until Now!

BuddytheReow

BuddytheReow

Moderator
Hey All,

I hate to be that guy, but I've gotta get this off my chest. I was super stoked to start a new job a few months ago. My last job had me really bored from a career standpoint and I filled that gap while working from home, household chores excluded, by breadboarding, soldering, playing, reading up on circuit analyses, or trying to be actively involved here. What I slowly learned is that if you`re THAT bored with your job you need a new one, plain and simple. Unless, you know, you're gonna retire in a year or two in which case I would imagine you just deal with it and count the dayz.

Anyways I was excited for my new job a few months ago until I realized how much more time it took out of my days. By the time I get home from work I need to spend some time with the family and then it's off to bed where I troll the forum here or read a book before lights out. In the mornings before work I may get about 20 min or so to myself. When I hit the 20 min mark just playing that's when I'm fully warmed up and REALLY ready to start playing and sadly i have to put it down to head out the door. Weekends are filled wirh chores or being with family or working on house projects and by the time that's all done I'm not really in the mood to play or build. For the past month I've been telling myself I need to breadboard something or finish up that enclosure or try to play that scale better. Life has a way of getting in the way and I guess that's the ebb and flow of things.

For those of you with kids or are a stay at home parent or work 60+ hours a week jobs I tip my hat to you for continuing to flood the build reports thread when you can and being more efficient with your time. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't have a lot of time to do the things I like to do and it's starting to bum me out. The flip side is that I still try to be at least semi active here and offer the knowledge or support that I have. I guess it's to remind me that I still enjoy doing this but getting motivated to build or play has been missing recently.

That's enough "woe is me" crap. As Fig would say, "now go build something!"
 
That sucks, man.

I understand the urge to want get a job where I can do something I'm actually interested in, but my problem I think is more in the line of I just kind of hate the entire concept of work and don't mind doing a boring job as long as I'm able to leave at 5 every day without a care in the world about my job. Maybe I just read too much Bob Black when I was young.
 
Man, that sucks. I hear you. I started a new job and although it’s exciting it’s also really stressful because I have a lot more responsibilities and I feel like I never have the time to catch up on things and all my coworkers are way ahead of me. I’m lucky enough to be able to take a guitar playing break almost every day (wfh). And my wife and I reached an understanding so that I get a couple hours break over the weekend. It doesn’t happen every weekend, but it makes my life better when it does.
 
BuddytheReow said:
Life has a way of getting in the way
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…of death. Yay life!

I hear you though. Life is nothing like a box of damn chocolates. It’s more like a 50-knob guitar pedal, where each control effects the other. Married? Kids? Combo-pedal, with more interactive knobs. Couple that with the fact that we rarely know one day to the next exactly what we’ll need to satisfy our inner expectations and flip that “contentment” switch on.

I’ve found as I’ve grown older that expectations are equally proportional to disappointments. I hope you find your fit, but if not I think you’ll rise to whatever challenge comes your way.
 
Big Monk said:
This would be where you and I disagree.

A big misconception/confusion I see out Here (the general career landscape) is people believing they need to be interested, stimulated, deriving pleasure from, etc. their jobs. I don't believe you have to like, be interested, or be passionate about your job to be good at it. The obvious outlier here is stay at home parents.

The closer to 40 hrs. a week you can get the better. Work is just the thing you do to get paid. Hobbies and home life are where I get my joy.

What I have slowly learned is that if you are bored with your job, you found the right one. Just make sure to be good at it and there will be no problems...;)
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Maybe I am one of those people that needs a new stimulus. I was good at my last job, but knew pretty quickly that it would take me nowhere at my company. The general vibe there was unless you’ve cured cancer (or work equivalent) or was part of the upper management clique you weren’t getting a promotion or a raise. WFH was the icing on the cake when COVID hit and thought it was a godsend. I had so much free time in my hands since I got so efficient at my job. The wife knew I wouldn’t put in 40 hours a week like her (her company is very much a “cheeks in seats” type regardless if you’re busy or not) and she knew I was bored with my job and suggested to find another one about 6 months ago. I don’t blame her for the suggestion and knew deep down I needed to do it, but didn’t want to give up the lifestyle.

I do know that the job I currently have will set me up nicely from a resume perspective. I guess you could call it growing pains for now and need to find a good outlet for it. In a few weeks or months I hope I will find the right balance in my life.
 
This is the way. The build will always be there, waiting for you to enjoy.

Whether it's family, work, travel, work-travel, or just something else, we all do what we can when we can.

I'm in a similar rut myself, focusing on work and moving into a new team. The time will come back, and we will all be better for it when we sit down at the work bench at last.
 
Big Monk said:
Work is just the thing you do to get paid.
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I agree on that one. I really enjoyed my last job and the pay was good enough, but the location sucked so the time I spent outside of work was limited to either doing nothing in particular or driving 90+ minutes to a bigger town.

My new job is less interesting to me. It's the same industry, but a solid 90% of my work is documentation and about 10% is actual fun technical work. But my manager is a really good guy that actually cares about my wellbeing, schedule isn't very demanding (I do WAY less than 40 hours of actual work per week), and the pay is good, plus benefits. I put in my hours at the office (mostly browsing forums), commute is only 20 minutes each way, then I'm home to hang with the family until kids go to bed, then I either build pedals or hang with just the wife (or sometimes both).

You don't need to love your day job, I certainly don't, but as long as it allows you to live a good life outside of work, not hating your job is enough in my personal opinion. Do I wish I could stay home and build pedals 40+ hours a week? You bet I do. But I love getting a consistent paycheck and health/dental/retirement benefits from a job I don't hate.
 
One of the best lines a boss told me was: Work to Live, not Live to Work.

Meaning you don’t always have to enjoy your job as long as you are enjoying what it pays for. I think the majority of people would quit their day job if money wasn’t an issue. But I also have seen a lot of people when they retire or stop working just totally fall apart. There is something about keeping busy, even if it’s not the fun filled passion activities that make us smile.

I’m a member of the change careers club. Walked away from a 20+ year job to go back to school and start over.

I hope you find your grove man, good luck and don’t forget to carve out that fun time. Gotta have it.
 
Big Monk said:
This is a super important statement. I get the "side-eye" sometimes when I make explicit the fact that my career is a passionless endeavor because people assume if you don't like your job then automatically you are not good at it.

I'm good at my job and I make it a point to try and be the best employee I can, even though I derive no pleasure or interest in what I do.

You can be good at your job and make a living even if it provides no value to you.
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Honestly, my goal is to find a nice work/life balance, great pay, and great benefits to support the family and sock away enough money to retire off of. The nature of what I do would be irrelevant, although it would just be in the accounting field.
 
Big Monk said:
I "sacrifice" manager opportunities and "increased" pay for being able to go home at 3:30 and not feel obligated to be signing in after hours and weekends.
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Huge +1 there. Screw management. I'm a level II engineer at my job. If I was a level II manager I could make $50k more a year, but I would actually have to work. The money I make is more than enough to pay the bills and put food on the table, and I get to spend most of the time dicking around on the computer, not responsible for much aside from occasional things people ask me to do that I pretend take way longer than they do. I consistently do well at my performance reviews, which leads me to believe that everyone else just dicks around as well.
 
I want to add another point from personal experience about being too attached to a job, or too passionate about it. I have been there. I tend to really care a lot about my work and about the projects I work on, or surrounding ones. Because of that, I’ve fallen into the trap of obsessing about a lot of work related things, so much so that I would constantly think about them, wasting my precious downtime (it could be anything: managerial concerns, technical issues, why that build failed, how things are too coupled…). I got to that point because of my passion. Then I realized that I needed to take a step back and let go a bit in order to have a better life balance. Projects, teams, tech, they come and go, but my family and my personal passions (like music and diy) do not. Changing perspective really helped me with fully disconnecting when I’m not on the clock. I am lucky to work for a company that values work life balance and allowed me to do that.
 
giovanni said:
I am lucky to work for a company that values work life balance and allowed me to do that.
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And that is HUGE. My company got an award a bit ago for being among companies with "best work/life balances". My manager frequently tells everyone "I will make sure you get paid for every hour of work you do, including overtime, but don't work overtime. Go home. Have a life."
 
vigilante398 said:
And that is HUGE. My company got an award a bit ago for being among companies with "best work/life balances". My manager frequently tells everyone "I will make sure you get paid for every hour of work you do, including overtime, but don't work overtime. Go home. Have a life."
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A supportive work environment is key. I am also lucky enough to work with a group of people who all help each other out. There's never a question when someone needs time off - if it's important to them that's all that matters and it's none of my business anyway, and that's how everyone here thinks (or at least acts, which is what matters). We are good at what we do and trust each other, and that is probably the main reason I have been here so long. If we aren't able to complete the work we need to do while maintaining lives that we are happy with that is managements' fault - not ours.
 
My whole life has been shaped by the fact that my mum died when I was 25. For the five or six years before that I lived at home and helped look after her - so from around 19 yrs old I was around to let dad work full time. As she missed out on so much stuff she wanted to do in life I decided that I would never again work in a job I didn't like.

So I ended up as a commercial photographer. When I studied design they made us buy a camera and learn how to shoot, how to process film and how to print. Obviously this was before digital photography came along but when digital did take over I seem to have timed my jump from one technology to another just right, so not only did I have a great job, but I started to make decent money from it too.

Work was fantastic for around 20 years. I met and worked with people I never would have met otherwise. I met prime ministers, actors, fashion models, amazing internationally acclaimed choreographers, designers, directors, got to dangle from helicopters taking shots of speed boats (one of the most insanely fun jobs ever!), travel all over the place, go to all those places nobody else gets to go (tops of buildings, bottom of gold mines, back stage at concerts, operas, plays) and generally be the world's busiest sticky beak. As a kid I would never have dreamt of some of the things I've seen and places I've been. It's been an incredible job for someone like me. It certainly wouldn't have suited everyone but for me it has been so much fun. In the past five years though work has largely dried up for various reasons and I have well and truly had enough now. As much as it has been fun the BS factor has risen out of all scale to the fun. And everyone thinks that having an iPhone with a camera means they are now a photographer. Sigh... But I have been extraordinarily lucky. And worked my ass off!
 
HamishR said:
My whole life has been shaped by the fact that my mum died when I was 25. For the five or six years before that I lived at home and helped look after her - so from around 19 yrs old I was around to let dad work full time. As she missed out on so much stuff she wanted to do in life I decided that I would never again work in a job I didn't like.

So I ended up as a commercial photographer. When I studied design they made us buy a camera and learn how to shoot, how to process film and how to print. Obviously this was before digital photography came along but when digital did take over I seem to have timed my jump from one technology to another just right, so not only did I have a great job, but I started to make decent money from it too.

Work was fantastic for around 20 years. I met and worked with people I never would have met otherwise. I met prime ministers, actors, fashion models, amazing internationally acclaimed choreographers, designers, directors, got to dangle from helicopters taking shots of speed boats (one of the most insanely fun jobs ever!), travel all over the place, go to all those places nobody else gets to go (tops of buildings, bottom of gold mines, back stage at concerts, operas, plays) and generally be the world's busiest sticky beak. As a kid I would never have dreamt of some of the things I've seen and places I've been. It's been an incredible job for someone like me. It certainly wouldn't have suited everyone but for me it has been so much fun. In the past five years though work has largely dried up for various reasons and I have well and truly had enough now. As much as it has been fun the BS factor has risen out of all scale to the fun. And everyone thinks that having an iPhone with a camera means they are now a photographer. Sigh... But I have been extraordinarily lucky. And worked my ass off!
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At the music store I worked at during college the music school part of the business wanted to expand their online presence so they put together bios with pictures of the teachers. The guy that ran the place had a degree in photography and a nice $2k camera, and he scheduled times for the teachers to come in for photoshoots, and the results were fabulous.

One of the teachers said "oh my friend is a photographer, I just had a photoshoot done a couple weeks ago, I'll send you the pics from that." iPhone pics. Every single one. Auto-focused B&W-filter iPhone pics.

As a hack with a cheap DSLR I pretend to use, I have a lot of respect for actual photographers.
 
Yea. The smartphone is killing off the art of photography...
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Funny thing is that it's only now, with the benefit of hindsight, that I realise what a great job I have had. There have been many, many bad days, as there is in any creative job. But I think the good outweighs the bad and how many people can talk about the day they were hanging out the side of a helicopter about 10m above the water at a beach with a seal raising its head out of the water to investigate what you are doing?

A while ago I was complaining to someone about how I miss the crazy stuff we used to do to get a shot, with all the laughter and experiments and working with other nutters to get a shot for a magazine article or ad or whatever. And the person I was complaining to looked at me and said "My job has never been like that. Most people's jobs are never like that. I think you had it pretty good." And I think she was right.

You get so caught up thinking about the jerks who messed you around, the people who didn't pay (actually quite rare) or the times the job went to someone less qualified because they were a friend of someone... Like I said, the kinds of crap that happens in any creative field. The highs have been very high and the lows very low.
 
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