I (24F) entered the professional world after finishing university two years ago, and I am beyond burnt out.
I’ve wanted to be a music journalist since I was a teenager, but worried that I wouldn’t actually be able to make a career out of it. I wound up deciding to go for psychology at university with the aim of becoming a psychologist and supporting industry musicians with mental health, most likely for a charity but eventually with my own independent practice. I’m an American in the UK and my options are really limited as I have to keep to specific roles with registered organisations for a visa to stay here.
I started at a homeless charity and within the first couple of months all of my colleagues left, leaving me to be the only support worker with 3 managers. So I was doing all of the assessments, acting as a receptionist, etc. But it was a small town and things were very quiet, but I couldn’t do anything else with slow days because I was customer facing. I left that job when housing costs rose as it paid way too little, moved to a different charity where my manager was horribly toxic. My ADHD couldn’t handle the way the charity functioned as well as the bitter micromanaging, and I never passed my probation period.
I was unemployed for a couple of months and found a job at a different charity working in substance misuse within prisons. It’s a new role that I was really excited about, but I had to abruptly move and the cheapest thing I could find is 2 hours away from my workplace. Unbeknownst to me, there was no plan in place for what my role would look like in practice, so I’ve spent 2 months “shadowing” and doing nothing. I travel between 2 sites, and this week about 5 of my colleagues are leaving – including a service manager.
As I’m in a prison I have no access to my phone or laptop, so after about an hour of shadowing a day I’m left clicking around to make myself look busy while my colleagues do admin work. I wake up at 5am and get home at 7pm to spend my day just clicking. What’s worse is I’ve started writing for music journals quite regularly and contribute on a daily basis, but I don’t get paid for it. But my commute is exhausting and by the time I get home I’m too tired to write, so I feel my passion for it burning out. I don’t know what to do. I keep saying I should give this job more time but I already resent it for the hours I’ve spent doing nothing. And I don’t feel like I’d enjoy any health and social care job at this point because I’ve burnt out so quickly, but I don’t feel like I ever really have enjoyed these jobs. It’s made me feel really stuck and depressed.