I’m (23f) still fairly new to the workforce, though I’ve had internships all throughout college and worked in high school. I’ve been at my current job almost a year and I genuinely enjoy my coworkers and the projects I get to work on. I work in digital marketing and have for several years.
My issue is that I feel insane guilt to the point of crying or having a panic attack in the bathroom when I don’t have anything to do at work, or if I’m taking it easy for a day. The nature of my industry means that there are busy times of the month but the middle two weeks tend to be more relaxed. I’m still in an entry level position so I have a light workload some weeks where I definitely don’t have 8 hours of work a day.
I try to do relevant research or take free courses online to expand my knowledge, but it’s sort of irrelevant since I know what I need to know and can’t apply new skills I learned until I’m in a higher position. For my first few months I would message my coworkers and almost beg for them to offload work to me, but that gets old and they recently don’t have anything for me to help with.
This is sort of just a vent, but today is one of those days where I barely have any work to do and the guilt is eating me alive. I watch others in my industry get laid off and was at a company last year that laid off everyone on my team except me and two others, and I’m terrified of losing my job even though I have no reason to be. I am always subconsciously paranoid that my boss is going to find out I don’t have a full week of work every week and get rid of me, or get mad at me (which just is so ridiculous and not likely). I have been keeping a written log of every single task I complete in case something happens. I work for a small company and want to make sure I truly earn my salary and prove myself, but theres just not enough to do.