I'd managed to flee from working previous full-time wage slaving for some 8 years, first by driving myself into absurd debts with grad school, then various self-employment schemes that barely scraped by, then 3 glorious years of unemployment thanks to covid. Eventually there was no choice left but wage slavery again.
I started 5 months ago, and it feels like I haven't left the building since then. Every day I get off work and get into bed, too tired and beat down to do anything else. Even if I push myself to stay awake as late as I can, maximize my hours not working, it seems marginal compared to the time spent at work, and the waking hours are largely in dread of my return. My dreams are often of being at work. My weekends seem little more than a breather and the dread doesn't leave.
There is no escape from this. How could I ever hope to find any other way to live? To endeavour to do anything at all ever again? I don't have the time nor energy to do anything with the brief hours I'm not at work, much less anything ambitious to get myself out of this hole. Hobbies or the stage or creativity or friends or romance or quiet contemplation or naps, I can't see how I can even hope to ever engage in any of these ever again. I've been at this desk in this warehouse for 5 months and I can't see any other path but 50 more years of this until I get old and sick and die – though as rapidly as my mental health has declined since returning to work, 50 years and old and sick seem divorced from any likely routes of death for me.
How does anybody do this? How can anybody working full time have anything resembling work-life balance? How do people find time to enjoy anything? to grow? to love?