Work whine
Aug. 5th, 2003 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jim_pPart of me feels super-guilty about even posting this... after all, so many folks on my friends list and elsewhere are either unemployed or sporadically-employed, I should just count myself lucky to have a job at all, right?
Still, work is starting to get to me bigtime. Not so much my specific employer as much as my overall work situation. I've worked myself into a niche that's quite lucrative when I can get work there (Linux kernel internals) but it's a fast-paced world that I'm finding it harder and harder to keep up with... as I'm slowing down and burning out.
I'm one of those who for years has envied the Europeans their generous vacation policies... after my first ten years as a working stiff I started to feel that I really could use Summer Vacation like I used to have it as a kid... take half of June and all of July and August off to unwind, have a change of pace, do the things you couldn't do when you were On A Schedule... that sort of thing. In the current work environment even if you are lucky enough to accumulate some vacation time project schedules often make it nearly impossible to use up significant chunks of it all at once... just when you begin to decompress it's back to the rat race.
Don't even get me started about job turnover resetting folks' vacation-accrual calendars (you could have 20 years in the industry, but as far as your new company is concerned all you rate is a measly two weeks, minus personal days and the mandatory christmas shutdown).
I need a fsck'ing sabbatical BAD, and I'm not gonna get it... unless I flip out and do something that'll get me one at the taxpayers' expense (not that I'm contemplating as much, mind you, but surveying the options there don't seem to be many...)
And then there's the question of what to do from here... I'm not sure how long I can continue what I'm doing; it's stressing me out big time, but I can't see anything else that'll earn me anything close to what I'm earning now, at least not in the current economy. Nobody's taking a flyer at anyone looking to change careers these days; if you don't have a 100% buzzword match for experience you shouldn't even waste anybody's time... Looked into becoming an eBay power seller, but that's a lot harder than it seems at first (basically any merchanise that's easy to source is hard to sell, and vice versa)
Grump.
Still, work is starting to get to me bigtime. Not so much my specific employer as much as my overall work situation. I've worked myself into a niche that's quite lucrative when I can get work there (Linux kernel internals) but it's a fast-paced world that I'm finding it harder and harder to keep up with... as I'm slowing down and burning out.
I'm one of those who for years has envied the Europeans their generous vacation policies... after my first ten years as a working stiff I started to feel that I really could use Summer Vacation like I used to have it as a kid... take half of June and all of July and August off to unwind, have a change of pace, do the things you couldn't do when you were On A Schedule... that sort of thing. In the current work environment even if you are lucky enough to accumulate some vacation time project schedules often make it nearly impossible to use up significant chunks of it all at once... just when you begin to decompress it's back to the rat race.
Don't even get me started about job turnover resetting folks' vacation-accrual calendars (you could have 20 years in the industry, but as far as your new company is concerned all you rate is a measly two weeks, minus personal days and the mandatory christmas shutdown).
I need a fsck'ing sabbatical BAD, and I'm not gonna get it... unless I flip out and do something that'll get me one at the taxpayers' expense (not that I'm contemplating as much, mind you, but surveying the options there don't seem to be many...)
And then there's the question of what to do from here... I'm not sure how long I can continue what I'm doing; it's stressing me out big time, but I can't see anything else that'll earn me anything close to what I'm earning now, at least not in the current economy. Nobody's taking a flyer at anyone looking to change careers these days; if you don't have a 100% buzzword match for experience you shouldn't even waste anybody's time... Looked into becoming an eBay power seller, but that's a lot harder than it seems at first (basically any merchanise that's easy to source is hard to sell, and vice versa)
Grump.
