This is how I’ve felt for most of my adult life. Worthless.
I struggled so hard in my office jobs. I am inept at office work. I am incompetent as a secretary, receptionist and clerk.
So forever I have felt worthless just because I’ve been doing the wrong kind of work!
That has defined my entire adult life.
I wonder how many other people feel worthless just because they are in the wrong place, or with the wrong person, or in the wrong job.
Women of my generation had very few career choices unless they were prepared to fight hard. Most of us accepted our lot and trudged on.
So for 40 plus years I have felt needlessly worthless. It caused me to get nearly everything else wrong in my life too. Wrong partners. Wrong places to live. Wrong friends.
I am astonished by this revelation, that there was never anything wrong with me, I was just a square peg being squashed into a round hole.
If you are in a job that ranges from mildly unsatisfactory to totally dysfunctional, get out!
Believe me, the longer you stay in an unhealthy situation, the greater the toll. You will not be aware of the damage over time as you numb yourself to constant pain, tell yourself lies and deceive yourself that everything is okay in a soul sucking job and/or with a psycho boss.
Pay attention to those red flags. They could save your life.
The more you excuse and tolerate a bad situation, the more contracted you become until you see no way out. You can see no options, no alternatives. You believe you can’t escape.
Until you do.
There is absolutely nothing worse than being in a place, or with a person, that preys on your insecurities, devalues you, or even just bores you out of your mind.
Get out!
Even if you have to take less pay, or be unemployed for a while, or do something totally out of your skill set and experiences, even at this time of record unemployment, it is far, far better than gritting your teeth and enduring something or someone who eats your soul. You will pay and the injuries may never heal.
And when you do get out, spend time with yourself and listen to your emotions without judgement. If you’re angry, sit with it, don’t act out, acknowledge that you have the right to be angry, that it is okay to be mad and truly feel it. You are NOT this anger. The anger is an emotion that needs to be seen and felt and loved. This is extremely important. Emotions have a lot of information to help you. If you have unresolved issues, you will leap from the frying pan into the fire. It happened to me, I went from bad to much much worse because I didn’t listen to myself.
A good book to read is, You Are Enough by Panache Desai.
Here is another truth worth sharing, people don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses.
Trust your instincts.
Believe in yourself.
Make your escape plan and get the hell out!
And love whatever you are feeling without acting it out.
Imagine if everyone in this world received a basic income.
For the want of a very small amount of money people cannot move forward in their lives.
It usually does not take much to have peace of mind. Enough to pay the rent. Enough to buy food. Enough to make a dream come true.
If everyone had enough money for their basic needs, what do you think this would mean?
No more poverty. It’d reduce crime.
Most people are not lazy. But most people are desperate and living on the edge. If they have a guaranteed income, it gives them freedom to become all that they can be. How could this not benefit the entire world?
The ones who do not want to work, this is totally okay. I mean, think about it. We already have that. What harm is in it? Most people want to have purpose and to be contributing to society. So most will continue to work. The ones that don’t, so what? They are in the minority.
I think this pandemic has exposed the huge flaws in capitalism. That the rich get insanely more rich, and the poor insanely more desperate.
The people who resist basic income are the uber rich because they want to enslave people. Their employees. There are very rare exceptions to this.
What if people could no longer be enslaved? What kind of revolution would we see in the working world? I envision a much safer, freer, compassionate working environment. Why do employers feel they must control their employees like they are children? If they have what they need, are treated like adults, and enjoy their work, and have respect for their bosses, a good job will be done.
What kind of revolution would we see in fixing the global messes we have of pollution, climate change, despots, dictators?
Before you dismiss universal basic income, give it a lot of thought how it would affect your life. What would you do with it? Make a dream come true? Go back to school? Quit your soul sucking job and do something you enjoy? Donate the money to charity? Volunteer? Work less hours and contribute more to friends, family time, strangers?
Obviously, the money has been there this whole time. It just hasn’t been used properly.
I think many people don’t understand why we need to lockdown our cities and practice social distancing and wear masks and all of these cumbersome annoying things that have suddenly been foisted upon us.
If you live in a place with a population of 200,000 that has one hospital and 400 beds and a deadly virus comes and infects even half of the people, making even 1/8 of them in critical condition, requiring hospitalization, you are not going to have enough beds, supplies, personnel to handle the crisis. And many more people will die because they can’t be treated.
If you go outside and are near large numbers of people, the chances that one of them has the virus increases. Being close to others facilitates the spread. And a virus spreads fast.
If you don’t wear masks you can give this disease to innocent others without even knowing it.
And the biggie – you can DIE from this virus. Hello? If you don’t die, you may also suffer greatly while being attacked by it. Especially if there is no hospital equipment to help you.
The people you love can die from this.
These are just some of the reasons. I wish that the people giving time on television would make it more clear to their audience why it is necessary to close things down for a while.
It is not violating your rights. It is not political. These things are to SAVE your life. It is not a hoax. It doesn’t matter so much where it came from. It is not a plot for socialism. Lockdowns and social distancing have nothing to do with economics. What matters is how do we stop corona virus before it kills many people. It is a VIRUS people. We are trying to slow down its spread so we can cope with it. So we can save lives. So hopefully we can eradicate it without too many casualties. So we can buy time to find a cure or effective treatment so others won’t die. Get it?
When you get sick don’t you have to do things you don’t want to do to get well? You knew it was probably not forever, and you believed you would win if you followed doctors orders. So why is this different?
I think it would pay you to read about other pandemics and try to get an understanding of what is happening here, and realize this is not a personal attack. This is not a personal affront to your precious liberties.
Not being prepared, not doing the right thing is the affront. Not giving hospitals enough or correct PPE is the affront. Not caring is the affront.
Yes, there are profound repercussions to having to do this. But unlike what has been said by a politician, who claimed “there are more important things than living”, I happen to disagree with that statement. How about you? You want to die so the economy floats? Don’t you think that having millions of people die and be disabled from this disease is not going to affect the economy? Think about it.
This will be over. We will get our lives back. But the longer people act stupid, the longer we will have to fight this pandemic. This is a VIRUS, people.
I am also amazed at how many people can’t amuse themselves for a month. They go crazy.
Tell me how countries that pre-covid times professed to not have enough money for health care, education, pollution, the homeless, now suddenly have trillions of dollars to bail out corporations?
How is it there is no money for PPE and ventilators and beds and hospitals and . . .?
How is it they can barely give the people who work, who risk their lives daily to keep everything going, a few measly dollars a month?
How is it we could not have basic income and avoided all this mess, when clearly, clearly the money has always been there.
We’ve been in ‘isolation’ and social distancing for only a month, and people are whining like crazy about it.
I’d bet a month ago, most were complaining about having to go to work!
What if you were really a prisoner, doomed to solitary confinement for life?
This ‘lockdown’ is only for a few months out of your whole entire life. AND it is for your and others safety.
Hello? This virus is quick and causes immense suffering and death. Is it worth going out for a get together, a concert, a meal, a rally, a protest, something social that lasts a few hours which you can’t wait to get back home and be alone again?
Here you are in the comfort of your own home. You can have most of what you need delivered. Computers enable us to chat and see our loved ones, do our work, be creative or just waste a whole lot of time on.
We have books and articles to read. Courses to take. Hobbies to start or dust off and rediscover. Instruments to play. Movies to watch. You could completely reinvent yourself!
This is a gift of time few of us ever get. Every day is ours!
I know there are difficulties. Children mostly I have heard. Normally when you don’t see or hear from your children for 10 minutes you freak out.
I get it. Being stuck with others 24/7 is definitely a challenge.
So this is a time of zen. Accept what is happening and deal with it! What a rare opportunity for personal and professional growth!
To clean the house.
Play with our pets.
Do nothing!
Grow up. Be responsible. Change your habits and perspective. Get your creative mind to work. We all need new ideas. Maybe change the world.
If you do have to go out, and many of us do, please wear a mask and gloves. Protect yourself and keep a safe distance from others. This is no time for vanity about how you look (though some people have been mask fashionistas!).
There is oh SO much to be grateful for, despite the times we are in.
Our animal companions.
The people on the front lines.
Our home comforts. Food. Computers. Technology. Good friends.
Look at the thousands upon thousands of good deeds being done every single day due to this pandemic. It is bringing out our true nature – LOVE!
Oh, yeah, there are some stupid shits, but they are a very tiny fraction of the population and not representative of most of the human race.
We are not the corruption of politicians. We are not the dirty laundry of big corporations. We are bigger and better than all of these self serving rats! We are good people.
My biggest hope is we emerge from this with a new framework on how to conduct business – with love, not to fatten bank accounts of grossly overcompensated shareholders and CEO’s. Our education system is improved so that people understand geography, environment, politics, humanity, how to think, and solve problems, and our teachers are well compensated. Our health care is just that, health care, not survival of the richest, it is for everyone and it is FREE. We finally stop talking and take action. We clean up all the pollution we’ve created and pass very strict laws to prevent contamination of our planet. No one should suffer any issue in any country.
We finally come to our senses. We are a global community. We need to celebrate our diversity and embrace it, because there are so many great ideas, art, music, technology, you name it, that we can share and create and make this world an Eden. Together!
I am fed up of celebrities posting pictures of their mansions and whining about self isolation.
Madonna in her rose petal bath telling us the virus is the great equalizer. Ellen telling us it’s like prison to be stuck in her 15 million dollar mansion. Or David Geffen afloat in his boat hotel (way beyond the normal definition of yacht) in the warm sunny tropics, really suffering it. Oh, boo f’in hoo.
Even just seeing Drake showing off his place makes me want to puke.
Stop it.
It doesn’t make me feel better to see how well you live. It doesn’t make me feel better to be patronized. I never cared in the first place what opulence and splendor you live in.
I guess I’m getting cabin fever. Maybe just a little.
So I invite people to post either their favorite place in their REAL homes, or the messiest, because we don’t have a staff of 20 to clean up our messes.
Here is where I do my creative stuff.
Yeah, it really is that tiny. It is space stolen from a small area in my apartment the building says is a dining room.
This is the real world.
Okay, I’ve vented now.
Hope your enjoying your little space and making lots of messes.
PS someone told me to use a hashtag for people to post their own rooms. I have not much idea what that is, but I will put it here and hope for the best. #OutbacktheCatRealRooms
I go through phases when I’m at home any length of time. Right now I’ve reached the dreamy phase.
When I’m first confined to barracks, I feel a bit lost and it is hard to establish a new routine.
Then I go through periods of neglect, laziness and generally being a bitch to be around. When I can’t stand myself anymore I immediately leap into strip the apartment to the bones housecleaning, scrub myself till I’m raw, and up and at ’em with living room aerobics 1-2-3, stretch that body, you can do 20 more reps! There, done!
And in between all my moods, I do my creative stuff and the hours and days fly by. I am in bliss!
Admiring everything sparkling and clean, my projects all up to speed and running, my body toning up, I can now relax and start to dream. Dream about what I would have liked the past to have been, what I might like the future to be. The present I can’t do a whole heck of a lot about.
I recreate the past into fanciful stories. Not that my past was bad, in fact, my childhood was idyllic! It is the adult part that sucked. Let’s see that adds up to 40+ years of it. I can do a lot of recreating with that!
The future awaits!
Sell everything and buy a mobile home and explore the land with Sam my cat. I almost did that once. My friend and I had a beautiful little van and we took many trips . . . those were better days.
Maybe go and work at a farm this summer as they are predicting a shortage of workers this year because of the corona virus. Fresh air, sunshine, dreadfully hard labour. Could this old body take the punishment? My mind likes to thinks so, but I’ve had experience with this kind of wishful thinking. It doesn’t end well, for body or mind.
Oh, well, who am I kidding. I’ll just go back to the office once it is opened and begin where it ended, like nothing ever happened.
I don’t have the courage, but mostly, I don’t have the money.
