I'm overall pretty lucky right now. Office job with a university, demands are not high at all, not much supervision, and the work, on its face, is easy and I'm relatively well-compensated.
And yet, with all this, my job remains exceedingly difficult. Not because any part of the actual work is difficult, but because my level of apathy is so significant than I usually spend half my work day just in the process of figuring out how to force myself to actually be engaged enough to give a shit about even just reading my email.
Somebody that actually cared about what this department is doing would work so much better than I would. Somebody that was actually involved, perhaps a previous student, or that had some connection to this place other than knowing Excel and desperately needing income.
I have shit I want to do. I have places I wish I had the energy to put my brain. I'm not stupid, I've studied and done well in university and learned enough math and programming. And yet, all of my energy goes towards trying to get the bare minimum done here.
The title was a rhetorical question. I know part of it is my attitude. I know that with hard work and time, I can probably find a way to make money to survive that can be better orientated towards me.
But I also know that part of it is that any community structure has collapsed. We have a job market based around get-whatever-you-need-to-pay-rent instead of what-can-you-do-when-you-thrive, that actively promotes a system of that apathy and disenfranchisement.