Don't get me wrong, I prefer to be productive and doing productive work. I get comfort from being responsible, and an upstanding member of my family and community. I just don't enjoy the way modern jobs suck all of your time, energy, and enjoyment of life away.
Counting my commute (because lets be real here, a work commute is part of the job and always has been), I spend 60+ hours a week working. I work to pay bills and have a moderate savings for a vacation or emergencies. I work to have an unenjoyable lunch while at work and then a rushed dinner at 8:30 at night when I finally get home. I work to get to a weekend where I have work-induced PTSD that makes me feel like I'm working to recover on my two days off. . .two days where I usually need to get things done that I couldn't do during the work week, because I didn't have any time. I work to have a 2 week vacation once a year that flies by and never makes me feel rested and rejuvenated, whether it's a vacation or a staycation.
The only joy I get from my work is knowing it provides a safe neighborhood and schools for my kids, and most people's work doesn't even provide that due to terrible wage laws across the USA. My kids naturally don't have any real concept that they've been so fortunate growing up in a safe area, so they think it's normal, and that they should have even more like their spoiled rich friends from across town. They think my stories of growing up poor are exaggerated or just not even real. So, yes I am glad I can provide them safety and opportunity, but I am not even sure it's helping them as their entitlement has blinded them somewhat and made them assholes.
So, here I am at 45, at work right now and just thinking “how tf am I going to do this shit for 20 or more years? Will I even live that long? Probably not. I'll have hated 95% of my life in order to enjoy 5% of it when I'm finally free of work and the life grind, then I most likely won't even make it to retirement, dying and leaving my entitled kids my legacy, which they'll only nominally appreciate at best.”
It's like we're all doomed to the punishment of Sisyphus, rolling a boulder up the hill for 60-80 years, only to have it roll back down for our kids to then roll up the same hill for 60-80 years, and on and on ad infinitum. All just on the hopes that one descendent down the line will eventually be able to escape the boulder by inventing the next FB and becoming among the rich and ruling class.
What a terrible awful life sucking joke.