I’ve been lurking on this subreddit for a while and it’s been great having others share my opinion on work. However, I decided to join reddit and share my experience and express my frustration. For context, I’m 27.
I’ve been working as a content writer on and off, part-time and full-time, for about 5 years. I work remotely, from a shitty city in a country in Eastern Europe for an SEO company in California. For the first 2 years, it’s been great. It was my first job, which I found several months after obtaining my Bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature. The salary for full-time in 2016 when I got hired was $300-$400, which was more than decent for where I live.
However, slowly but surely I got sick and tired of it, which I now recognize as burnout. I’ve tried multiple other jobs, in the “real world”, to which I failed miserably. I have many mental health issues, including anxiety disorder, BPD, depression, C-PTSD, bipolar disorder type II, and severe insomnia. I’ve been on psychiatric medication since I was 19. My mental health is still mostly shit, even though I’ve changed about 5 psychiatrists, am in therapy for about 2 months, and was voluntarily hospitalized in 2 psych wards for a total of 3 weeks. I’ve never seen life as a gift – I wish I’d never been born to begin with. I didn’t ask to be here and be a wage slave.
I’ve started seeing through the illusion that I have a great job recently. For my skills and experience, I should be paid more than $1,000 for full-time, which is mentally draining. I have to record my desktop while I work, which I found to be a very annoying stress factor, as well as kinda abusive, and everyone overwhelms me with tasks even though they know I’m already full. My boss is manipulative and said she’s been tolerating my periods of absence (when I was in the psych ward, when I was completely burnout, when I wanted to try another job etc.) because “I work fast, my work is high-quality, and I’m exceptionally smart”. She throws in a $100 bonus from time to time just so I won’t quit. But guess what – I’m looking for another job. Just today I found a very similar job at another U.S. company hiring people from my country, too. Because of my experience, I will most likely have a less stressful job (hopefully). BUT – I WILL STILL HATE THE IDEA OF HAVING TO WORK TO SURVIVE IN THIS SHITHOLE!
Just so you get a clearer idea about what my current job involves – I have to write content for our clients’ websites, which range from law firms and hospitals to golf vacation and limo transportation services. We have 4-5 different campaigns for our main client, a law firm, for which the linkbuilders ask me to write countless articles on the same topic but in a different way to meet the requirements of each prospective publisher. So you can only imagine how overwhelming that can feel. I currently have 6 articles to write, as well as 10 scientific/medical blogs for the main site.
I’m stuck. My parents, the only people in my life except my therapist, say they’d give anything to have my knowledge and my “dream job”. They have no idea how exhausting even 20 hours of monitorized writing per week can be. I simply can’t take this anymore and I feel like I’m gonna end up on the streets 20-30 years from now, when I’d live alone, without my parents, because I wouldn’t have a constant source of income. And this makes me want to k**l myself even more.
Anyone else in the SEO industry hating their job? Also, what would you do in my situation? I feel like shit for struggling to work and I hate it when my mom assumes that I’m not willing to put in some effort or that I’m lazy. She has a very physically demanding job with long hours, that’s why she sees my job as perfect. But she has no idea of the mental and emotional burden that comes with it…