I’m in my 40s and am just burnt out on everything.
I used to enjoy my job, but the company has made changes over the last year and it has become increasingly Sisyphean. If you’re not familiar with Sisyphus, he was a man from Greek mythology who did something to piss off one of the gods. I don’t remember what and I’m not going to bother Googling it. No one cares what the humans did anyway. Prometheus stole fire, that’s the only one everybody remembers. But everyone remembers the Greek gods’ punishments. Sisyphus was cursed to roll a massive boulder up a hill for all eternity. Every day he would push it until he collapsed from exhaustion, then it would roll all the way back to the bottom and when he woke up he would have to start all over again. That’s what my job feels like. I used to have things under control, and now I can’t make any progress. Everything gets finished at the last critical minute before I’m shoved onto the next task. I’ve been interviewing in hopes of moving to another company, but so far nothing. Until I can do that I’m trapped in a job I despise. It’s not any specific co-workers, it’s the situation. If you’d asked me at the end of 2020, I would have said I wanted to stay at this job until retirement. Now that very thought is soul-crushing.
Nothing is fun anymore. I feel like I’ve tried everything in this life I would ever want to do, and now I’m just treading water until I drown. I’m single, atheist, asexual with no desire for a relationship. Not lonely, just bored. I have a group of friends, but I don’t hang out with them except one-on-one, because there’s been a lot of division amongst them lately, with every little disagreement being politicized and weaponized, and I just don’t have the energy to deal with it, especially after work. I have one close family member living nearby, and two adorable cats I love more than my own life, and they are about the only reasons I can think of to stick around. I don’t hate my life enough to actively end it, but if Russia nuked us I’d be perfectly fine with that, so long as I and everyone I care about died instantly in the initial explosion.
This weekend I had no ambition, so I reactivated my Netflix and binged three different shows. Completely wasted my previous free time and felt no regrets because the distraction from reality was comforting. Entertainment helps for dulling the pain of existence. Sometimes I’ll have a THC edible and that’s a fun mind rollercoaster for a few hours. I try to limit myself there because I don’t want to become dependent on it. Same with alcohol. I would never try anything harder. As depressing as my life is now, I could always make it worse, right? That thought gives me no comfort.
Society is becoming increasingly dystopian. Everybody hates everybody else just for not sharing the exact same opinion, and organizations too far-reaching for us to comprehend either make us fight with each other or gnaw on the remains. I’m not political. I hate both of the major U.S. parties. They’re like two playground bullies who enjoy making life miserable for half the kids, and they take swipes at each other all the time, but their real goal is to work together to make sure nobody else can ever step up to challenge them and improve things for everyone. Greedy assholes just take whatever they want and get away with it. Everyone is screaming their opinion, no matter how ignorant. The world is deafening and inescapable.
I cannot imagine another ten, twenty, thirty years of feeling this way. Every time I exhale, I can feel myself slowly dying.
We already have pestilence and war. That’s half the horsemen. Just end it already.
2 comments
The Myth of Sisyphus is a common discussion point in my life, so it’s nice to see someone else understand the proper context. The philosopher Albert Camus wrote a book of essays on it, and the whole damn thing is about coping with the absurd, with pointlessness, uselessness. I read it the first time at age 17, and sometimes I wonder if that isn’t the source of my endless apathy.
Lately one part gets my focus more; When the rock rolls to the bottom of the hill, why does he get back up and push it again? There’s no one forcing him to my memory. Yes, he’s in some variety of hell, but that should be liberating,
Either;
He stops pushing and sits at the bottom of the hill for eternity, not a bad option
OR
he stops and someone comes around to try and convince him to start again. That sounds interesting and preferable to pushing the rock.
So, I’m unemployed and too burnt out to chase another soul sucking job. I definitely agree on the toxic nature of interpersonal communications these days. I see all the awful things happening and being said, and I just want to retreat to my room, my movies and video games.
Had a near miss on Saturday with having the willpower to kill, and the frustration to direct it inward. Got through it, not sure that’s a good thing, but here we are. I’d rather be sitting apathetic at home than spending two weeks at a hospital getting my medications adjusted
Lol I thought of Sisyphus a few days ago. I didn’t remember his name, but I was so angry. Every person in my environment struck me as so so conceited. Every one of them just struggling every day day of their lives to achieve the most stupid things. A house of their own. Families. An early retirement. And God, for what? To piss their pants when they’re old? I wish this culture of unhappiness would end.
As for dystopia, yeah, the world’s gone to shit. But what are you going to do? It’s too big to be changed. But you know how nothing matters when you’re numb? Cultivate that sentiment. Build your own mental escape. The world’s dystopian but your reality doesn’t have to be.