I am 20 years old and work as a receptionist from 8-5 with a 40-minute commute five days a week, and I feel like I am wasting away. I wake up, get ready, arrive at work, count the hours until 5, get home at 6, wait for 9 o'clock to roll around, go to sleep, then wake up and do it again. I am paid $15/hr and this is the closest I have come to being financially stable on my own (even though I am still very far from it), however I can feel myself becoming an empty shell; I have almost no energy to do anything after work. Maybe a few days out of the week I will cook or tend to my plants, but other than that I just sit and watch TV. My brain is fried and I feel aged. I look at my coworkers, who the majority of are at least a decade older than me, and wonder how they live like this. How do people function with a job that takes up almost the entirety of the day? How do you not feel like your entire life revolves around your labor? As much as I would like to leave this job, flee the country and never look back it's impossible to do right now. So, I guess what I'm asking is if there any steps I can take to alleviate this feeling, or break the cycle I am in. Or am I just stuck here, telling myself that maybe I will get to retire early if the world doesn't end before I'm 60.