Everyday since the thought first popped in my head, I always think about how much I can’t stand how long work days and hours have to be and how (at least in my field) we just have to accept long commutes. How we’re encouraged to prioritize work over personal time (and by extension our mental and physical health) in order to progress in our careers. Often the people I see higher up in my field have clearly sacrificed some aspect of their lives for work. They don’t care for family time, personal development time, they look like they’ll have a heart attack at any moment, and they drink/smoke to cope with the stress. I don’t want to end up like this. I don’t even seem to be good at dealing with the first decade of this and society says I have at least 3 more to go if I’m lucky.
I’ve been getting into motivating myself to keep the energy up so I can get exercise, sleep, family/friend time, etc. to enjoy/improve my life. It’s been better but it’s tiring and I made another post about how I’m in a place where I’ve been putting in less energy at work so I can have the capacity to do what I want after work.
I know to a certain extent I can always choose to be a person who works the hours required then leaves. Or I could try to find another job in my field where there’s a better work culture and flexibility but right now I’m feeling pretty pessimistic. There’s only so much power I feel that I hold as one person. I feel that in my field there’s likely always going to be that encouragement to work hard all the time to prove your worth and there will always be people willing to live up to that. People who say that “yeah this system isn’t ideal but suck it up and stop being lazy.” I just don’t understand that. If we’re all unhappy, then why are we all doing this. Are we stuck?
If I speak up and quit and take a less stressful job, that won’t come off as there being a problem with me rather than the way these companies are run. If I stay, I want to speak up and change things but I worried that’ll be like announcing weakness also.
Kind of rambling but I can choose to leave and TRY to find something that better suits what I’m looking for in life, I can choose to stay and say something, whatever, but that doesn’t change the work culture everywhere and the pressure. And it doesn’t change that employers/clients/etc. don’t give a shit about workers quality of life. I feel so helpless.