I'm in a good place. Let's say a 7.
I have a new job that pays well. I get to essentially do my work unsupervised and can choose to work from home or office. I recently married the love of my life overseas with my closest family and friends. My wife makes good money, and we both want for nothing. My family all lives within the city and we are very close - i see them at least once a week.
What keeps it a 7 is truly my career choice. I loathe my job. I'm good at it (as good as the average in the profession at least), but i truly cannot fathom doing this for another 30 years. I have contemplated leaving several times; but haven't been able to find something I want to do without taking a major risk moving forward. My wife and I have just started to get to the point where we can enjoy the incomes we are making, so it's a struggle to contemplate giving that up as well.
Work is high stress and high conflict with super high anxiety. Sleepless nights, constant thoughts about files and work. While largely unsupervised, i have moved to a company that is just getting into my line of work and so there is a level of stress of it actually being profitable. More profits, more files, more stress, more anxiety. My wife is in the same line of work and equally struggles with the above which offers some support, but also doesn't allow us to switch it off in the way some others can.
I've coped with the above horribly. I started using video games as a way to engage my brain to keep the anxiety at bay. A more active way to pass the time than TV which offers little solace. This obviously doesn't help, and my fitness has certainly diminshed. My wife also isnt too happy when i am glued to a computer screen conquering Europe a couple hours each night. I'll play it to cope and then feel horrible that i wasted an evening, day, weekend sitting around playing video games.
I dream of an uncomplicated life. One that I grew up detesting (i was too smart for that, after all). Owning a little coffee shop in some provencal town making enough money to keep a wife and two kids happy as we blissfully waste away the years. I guess I could do it, but how long would that last before I start missing the money/status?
Then it hits me. #### Cappy, what do you have to be worried about? you haven't had a struggle in your life. Imagine having real loss, real struggles? could I even cope? My life has been pretty easy, all things considered. I truly do not think I could handle the inevitable death of my parents. A life of ease is built on a fragile foundation.
But therein is another rub. I have had an overly privileged life. The true definition of privileged. There is zero reason not to be successful outside of my own faults. I get too angry when it's insinuated that I am lazy (probably because I am) and constantly fear that I won't be able to actually take advantage of every random generic gift I have received. Most of my friends are successful, and seeing them succeed (while awesome) makes me question my own successes.
What can we take from the above? First, Cappy has some major First World Problems! Second, our society as it is currently constructed is crushing on everyone's mental health, and I do not think we are societally set up to handle it; nor have we actually identified the issues to even try to solve it. We are definitely better at recognize this as "mental health" but nothing has actually changed rather than a few extra days off and the omnipresent late stage consumerist ideology of "self care" which usually involves consumption. Third, I think there is some benefit to "positive thinking" that maybe I always considered hogwash
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