Dead End Job, Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

IlluminatiPirate

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Once you finally get a degree out of college or you finally move out of your parents house and live on your own. And then you get out and work at a big corporation. You hear the old saying "Today is the first day of the reat of your life".

It is really depressing when it dawns on you that this is what life is really all about. That you really did have it easy when you were a kid and in your college years. Tha you are finally an adult and your coworkers have been working at the same job for 20 years in the same position and they are contempt with it. Just finish the week and look forward to the weekend.
EVRY DAY

Maybe is just me over thinking it. I got a new job that is very tedious and no upward mobility. It makes me feel chained and I dont know what to do next as far as a career goes
Can anyone else relate?
 

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[Reposted after the server move snarfed the original. Thankfully, our attentive admins saved it, so here goes...]

Very relatable. I remember going through a similar crisis in the first year of my undergrad, actually...

I'd gone to a good private college in order to get a degree that would eventually lead to teaching, alongside of working on my own music, and this model was pretty solid. BUT...this was autumn, 1980, and the USA elected the beginning of the current slippery slope, namely Ronald Reagan. And one of his big bullet points was that he was going to WIPE OUT the National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities. If your future career model involved anything in the arts at that point in time, you wouldn't have been alone in experiencing a MASSIVE sinking feeling. At that point in time, the NEA and NEH were supporting a massive arts culture in the USA. Fuck...if NMDS hadn't gone dark during that, this whole scene HERE could've benefitted, as NMDS (New Music Distribution Service, an outgrowth of Carla Bley's work) was exactly the sort of company that could've been a huge conduit for vaporwave as it was for so much experimental and uncategorizable work in the 1970s and 80s. But a big chunk of their operating budget came from NEA grants, so NMDS finally had to shut down around 1989 after soldiering on for years after Reagan and David Stockman's budgetary slash-fest.

Anyway, it was apparent that I had to BAIL; this academic/NEA-centric path was clearly not going to happen. So in the span of two months, I switched schools to cut my expenses down. Luckily, I wound up where I learned much of my audio and music theory skills (MTSU) and this put me back home in Nashville, which is a good place to work with any sort of audio technology. This has never led to where I'd expected to wind up, though, but I DO think this direction was/is far more artistically versatile in the end. But yeah...don't be satisfied with what you get handed. Some "safe" things are actually traps, in the long run, and busting out of them is not only a desirable skill these days, but being able to "read the winds" at what you're doing is super-useful. After all, if you don't know you're stuck (or about to be!), you're just going to sink deeper; best to know when to bail, regroup, and shoot for something more equitable.
 

IlluminatiPirate

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Lugia909 said:
But yeah...don't be satisfied with what you get handed. Some "safe" things are actually traps, in the long run, and busting out of them is not only a desirable skill these days, but being able to "read the winds" at what you're doing is super-useful. After all, if you don't know you're stuck (or about to be!), you're just going to sink deeper; best to know when to bail, regroup, and shoot for something more equitable.
Thanks exactly what I'm afraid of is being stuck. Which I am because I need this job. But I still have hope because I am trying to learn python though and see if I can land jobs on Upwork on the side. Or something with upward mobility atleast.
 
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netdenizenlain

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IlluminatiPirate said:
Once you finally get a degree out of college or you finally move out of your parents house and live on your own. And then you get out and work at a big corporation. You hear the old saying "Today is the first day of the reat of your life".

It is really depressing when it dawns on you that this is what life is really all about. That you really did have it easy when you were a kid and in your college years. Tha you are finally an adult and your coworkers have been working at the same job for 20 years in the same position and they are contempt with it. Just finish the week and look forward to the weekend.
EVRY DAY

Maybe is just me over thinking it. I got a new job that is very tedious and no upward mobility. It makes me feel chained and I dont know what to do next as far as a career goes
Can anyone else relate?

Yeah I feel that a lot. Honestly, I've turned to or realized a few things in the face of this. The first thing is that I have slowly realized that finding a job you love and climbing the corporate ladder for success and money are both lies told to you by (capitalist) society to make you try harder for very little. It is enough to be employed and be able to afford the necessities in life. Your employed labor shouldn't necessarily be the thing you love most in life, just what is done to make ends meet. To that end, I've turned to my community and trying to help out there to find the fulfillment that I would find through work that was promised to me by society. It's a lot better than trying to find fulfillment in my work I find, though building relationships within your job also helps with the tedium. As far as career aspirations, I have mostly stopped having them outside of trying to think of an out once I have my loans paid off. The only goal I have now is to pay off my loans, get a house, then quit my job to work or start a cooperative. That being said, those are a long way out.

Another thing I have realized along the way is that there is something fundamentally wrong with our consumer capitalist that is a "democracy". Why do I need to buy products I don't need? Why do we produce trinkets that serve no purpose other than to be collected? Why do we claim to be a democracy when I do not have a vote in many places, such as my work place or in how our economy is run? To that end I do have to say that since I started work in 2017, I have begun reading and listening to Marxist and Communist theory to try to find alternatives to our system and now identify as an anti-consumerist communist.

I think that a lot of us feel like this, that there is an ever-present undertone of tedium in existence that is brought about by modern society. I feel that is why we (as people who listen to vaporwave) turn to vaporwave to express our discontent with the modern system by looking backwards into the past and making sincere and ironic works of nostalgia. We want to revel in those times because it seems like there was more optimism or simplicity to it, something that is now no longer present.

To that end, I guess I have say I fundamentally relate, but I do think that there are ways to break out of this system and end these feelings we all have. I'm not sure if I have answers, but I guess my recommendations would be to think of the world you'd rather live in in the face of what is presented to you and try to find ways to work towards it with others; for trying to walk a path alone fundamentally makes you feel alone and makes every action feel more arduous.

Sorry if I got a little introspective or philosophical there.
 
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IlluminatiPirate

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I have been looking into minimalism, its just that the thought that a bunch of my time are going to be held towards something I don't really much enjoy but I do understand its a nesssacary for me to survive. Now I'm not a communist but I do feel that its true that we are pushed to climb the corporate ladder and build things that we don't need. I guess I'm just venting. What kind of cooperative are you trying to start?
 
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netdenizenlain said:
Another thing I have realized along the way is that there is something fundamentally wrong with our consumer capitalist that is a "democracy". Why do I need to buy products I don't need? Why do we produce trinkets that serve no purpose other than to be collected? Why do we claim to be a democracy when I do not have a vote in many places, such as my work place or in how our economy is run? To that end I do have to say that since I started work in 2017, I have begun reading and listening to Marxist and Communist theory to try to find alternatives to our system and now identify as an anti-consumerist communist.

I think that a lot of us feel like this, that there is an ever-present undertone of tedium in existence that is brought about by modern society.

I'd have to agree, although the main flaw with the American "democracy" is that America isn't a democracy, at least not in the sense of how that system evolved in Ancient Greece. America is a republic, which has a representative democratic form of government, and that's how everyone back in the 18th c. figured the new country would work best. Back then, they didn't have the tech needed for a true democracy, given that that new country was far more spread out than anything that the Greeks saw circa 500 BCE.

Unfortunately, this bastardized "democracy" concept filtered down into things such as business models, societal aspects, etc, which is why that so-typical Us vs Them nonsense pervades everything in the USA nowadays. Worse still, certain scumbags figured out how to weaponize that, which has led to MASSIVE internal rifts in the country. Now, everyone has to have their own policy about who they're "supposed to like" and who they're "supposed to hate". One side of the equation MUST be oppressed because...uh, makes sense, right?

Well, no. It DOESN'T make sense. There should be enough whatever-you-need to go around, whether that's money or housing or food or toilet paper or whatever. But you also have a weird micro-class of billionaires that NEED things to balance that way, so the idea of a more socialist approach to government in the USA is something they shovel money at opposing, so they can quash it. This isn't exactly like Marx envisioned class struggle. His view of "aristocracy" was the old-world rich, not the vicious curs that just happen to pull down ten figures due to whatever accident of birth or hard work or (more likely) underhanded fuckery they have on their side. Big Daddy Karl certainly could NEVER have foreseen something like, say, the Koch brothers; if he HAD, he'd probably think he was going insane!

But he did get it right in observing that those people desperately need an underclass. Fact is, capitalism REQUIRES an underclass in order to "function normally"...whatever that means, given the subject matter. But whatever it means, I don't think that it's supposed to mean that whole swaths of the population worldwide have to do without education, clean water, proper nutrition, a free media, proper health care, etc. But that's what we've got now...and no, I'm not talking about the third world; everything in that list...and more besides...can easily be found here in the USA.

Yeah, shit's broken. When everything devolves down to a "service economy", but those services don't actually accomplish anything meritorious, then you've got a problem. However, most people don't see this, so when they start handwringing about how things are so scaaaaaaaaary, they don't pick up on the things that they need to be REALLY afraid of. Those people protesting all over the world are just "bad people with too much time on their hands" as far as they're concerned; I suppose it would be far too much to ask for those "nice people" to also realize that they play a huge part in why these other people are protesting. Years of bad role models and leadership have really pumped out the brain-fog "nice people" live in, and I'm not just talking about the USA here.

It's very tempting to look at the present clusterfuck that's posing as human civilization and just...well, throw up your hands and start looking for the exit, frankly. On the one hand, there's a lot of stuff that was created that's truly amazing. But on the other, we may be looking at our grandkids some 40, 50 years hence and be shocked when they ask "Did people really go into space?". It's not a good trend.
 

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IlluminatiPirate said:
What kind of cooperative are you trying to start?

I'd like to either start a brewery or a machine shop. Structure it democratically and allow people to vote on the wages for different jobs within the operations as well as vote on who is in management if there are managers at all.
 
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IlluminatiPirate

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netdenizenlain said:
IlluminatiPirate said:
What kind of cooperative are you trying to start?

I'd like to either start a brewery or a machine shop. Structure it democratically and allow people to vote on the wages for different jobs within the operations as well as vote on who is in management if there are managers at all.
A brewery sounds awesome to have. I think if I had a brewery I would make is a pirate theme :-\ or go for those new seltzer drinks. They seem to be booming right now
 
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Campcerous

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Yeah I feel ya, been super busy lately between work and school, got like 25 hours on the clock last week :(
 
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I think I've felt like this before. I perhaps can count myself lucky because I've had some pretty significant upward mobility in my career so far (entered the workforce in 2010).

You don't have to absolutely love what you do, but your job should at least satisfy three things:

1. It should suit your talents / abilities
2. It should pay the bills
3. It should be something you believe achieves something net positive or productive for society

I dunno about having fun at work or feeling like its a passion, but I know that you should at least be feeling satisfied with your work.

Hope it works out for you!
 
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Darohan

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Once you finally get a degree out of college or you finally move out of your parents house and live on your own. And then you get out and work at a big corporation. You hear the old saying "Today is the first day of the reat of your life".

It is really depressing when it dawns on you that this is what life is really all about. That you really did have it easy when you were a kid and in your college years. Tha you are finally an adult and your coworkers have been working at the same job for 20 years in the same position and they are contempt with it. Just finish the week and look forward to the weekend.
EVRY DAY

Maybe is just me over thinking it. I got a new job that is very tedious and no upward mobility. It makes me feel chained and I dont know what to do next as far as a career goes
Can anyone else relate?
I'm currently working a "dead-end job". I know it's a dead-end job. I went into it with the intention of holding it as a dead-end job. It has nothing to do with my career goals, and I get paid minimum wage. My thinking is, not every job you have has to be "the one" - some are just stepping stones, things we do to tide us over until we find somewhere we'd rather be, and I think that's ok. As long as you still have a goal in mind; you're still looking or you're still working, then take as many dead-end jobs as it takes. Save that money, and get yourself to the next step. Some people fall into the trap of getting into one of those jobs and thinking "well, I guess this is it", when in reality it's only just the beginning. The motto of "The first day of the rest of your life" isn't necessarily wrong, but the rest of your life doesn't have to be spent in the same place you started it either. Keep your eyes open and jump at every opportunity - there's somewhere else you deserve to be, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be where you are right now.
 
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I'm currently working a "dead-end job". I know it's a dead-end job. I went into it with the intention of holding it as a dead-end job. It has nothing to do with my career goals, and I get paid minimum wage. My thinking is, not every job you have has to be "the one" - some are just stepping stones, things we do to tide us over until we find somewhere we'd rather be, and I think that's ok. As long as you still have a goal in mind; you're still looking or you're still working, then take as many dead-end jobs as it takes. Save that money, and get yourself to the next step. Some people fall into the trap of getting into one of those jobs and thinking "well, I guess this is it", when in reality it's only just the beginning. The motto of "The first day of the rest of your life" isn't necessarily wrong, but the rest of your life doesn't have to be spent in the same place you started it either. Keep your eyes open and jump at every opportunity - there's somewhere else you deserve to be, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be where you are right now.
This is exactly right. Just make sure you set short / mid and long term goals for yourself. Time can really go by in a flash without you noticing.
 
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Once you finally get a degree out of college or you finally move out of your parents house and live on your own. And then you get out and work at a big corporation. You hear the old saying "Today is the first day of the reat of your life".

It is really depressing when it dawns on you that this is what life is really all about. That you really did have it easy when you were a kid and in your college years. Tha you are finally an adult and your coworkers have been working at the same job for 20 years in the same position and they are contempt with it. Just finish the week and look forward to the weekend.
EVRY DAY

Maybe is just me over thinking it. I got a new job that is very tedious and no upward mobility. It makes me feel chained and I dont know what to do next as far as a career goes
Can anyone else relate?
Just got a wagecuck job at what is essentially a Wal-Mart, today is my orientation, I can definitely relate, I think it's healthy to have some other goals not related to your job though. Spending time out in nature is a must.
 

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So, have it moved anywhere, @IlluminatiPirate ?
Frankly, that feeling is one of the reasons I try to avoid regular job as possible. I'm practically starving here on ocassion, but it fucking feels great to be free from the... you know, regularity. Same road everyday, same office everyday, same faces everyday - I just can't take it.
I'm quite scared of a day when I'll finally be forced to take regular job again.
 
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