Revival

Somehow I've risen from the smodering ashes of chaos to write again.

How, I have no idea...

It's been insane to say the least. And every time, I swear it's going to get better. It never does.

I was reading commentary on Slashdot, where someone asked when you should just walk away from your job. My favorite was this comment by poster TonyZahn, ""A great indication of when you should quit your job is when you wake up every morning and dread going into work." I've always told people I base it off the quality of my Sunday afternoons. If you get a sick feely in the pit of your stomach Sunday afternoon knowing that you have to go back tomorrow, it's time to leave." (See the original post and the few thousand responses at the link in the title above.)

I've noticed people are very divided on job situations, but I have to agree with this, even over all the others. There are pros and cons to every job, and believe it or not, there are a whole lot of people in the same boat as you, suffering the same indignations and incompetencies (whether perceived or real). I know some people will tell you that it's just a job so it doesn't matter what you're doing. I've even had this discussion with my own mother when I start to express displeasure over my current job.

"But, dear, what if you did something else instead?"

Such as?

I probably could. I have enough skills by working in such a small department that I could probably get a reasonable job in another field and make decent money. I do enough corporate events that I could go into Event Planning (and according to the sheer number of job listings I've seen for it, the demand far outweighs the number of people who can do it). I could go back to school for a bit and get into programming, which was always my second love. I could go way back into the early days of my pre-college career and be an administrative assistant or go back into customer support. If I get desperate, I can always go back to waiting tables. It earned me a living back then. It wasn't a pretty living, but it was a roof over my head and gas in the car. And that's better than nothing at all.

There's always plenty to do. But the question is and will forever be: how happy will I be?

My love has always been creating. I'm happiest when that spark hits and I can just block the world out for hours on end to work on it. I still get a thrill from seeing a finished piece come back from the printer. There's nothing like the smell of ink on paper to make a person remember why they got into this field to begin with. It's a kick to know someone is actually paying me to do this kind of thing.

But when the same job that makes you so happy when it all works right also starts giving you medical problems and turning you into an insomniac (and no, I don't mean the nights you stay up to meet a deadline), it's time to quit. It's time to start somewhere else, no matter what the benefits of staying might be.

I don't mean quitting the field entirely, but moving on to other companies and other opportunities.

I've thought about it a lot. There are plenty of benefits to staying, some freedoms that I'm not sure I'd get somewhere else. There's the comfort level of being in one place and knowing how things are, even when they're bad. There are friendships made and a cubicle full of stuff you've collected over the years.

But when you get that sick feeling every Sunday afternoon, when you start biting the heads off people who don't deserve your sudden bursts of wrath over stupid insignificant things, when you take it home with you every day and can't let it go, when you wonder how bad it would really be to become a raging alcoholic, when the time it takes you to shower in the morning only serves to piss you off because you're thinking about the day ahead... it's past time to get out.

I absolutely do not advocate giving your boss the finger and walking out the door, tempting though it may be (and who hasn't fantasized about that at least once in their career?). What I do suggest is looking while you have something. It may gall you to no end to be there, but being quiet and doing your job will give them no reason to be suspicious. The job search is a light at the end of the tunnel. It may be a months (or a year) long tunnel, but it's hope.

And for now, hope is enough to get through.