I read recently about the case of a boy who died of 'dry drowning.' Essentially, he got enough water in his lungs to start the shutdown of the lungs but not enough for anyone to really notice anything was amiss, other than a general lack of energy and lassitude. Poor kid took a nap and never woke up.
My job is slowly dry drowning me. Just enough at a time that I don't storm out cursing all of them to perdition, but still drowning me, nonetheless. My job should be done by 2.5 people (the .5 working half in German inquiries, half in other organizations) and right now, there's just me. What I remind myself is that I have extraordinary job security (compared to many in the American workforce at the moment) and that the job itself is interesting enough to ignore a lot of the unhappiness that comes attached to being overworked and undercompensated. I wonder how long I'll be able to continue to convince myself of that....
Monday, September 01, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
You should talk to your colleagues about this. Strength in numbers! (You know where I'm going with this....)
unfortunately.... I actually don't really have any colleagues. The other person who did what I do left to study history at the University of Chicago two weeks ago (I KNOW!!!), and the closest other person answers inquiries in the US, so it's not the same at all. It's a really weird situation. But her leaving caused the feeling of drowning... I was at least only up to the neck before. :D
Crikes. Working yourself too hard at the day job will eventually take a very bad toll (and actually, you're already beginning to experience this...). No amount of money is worth that, so I'm glad that you're keeping your options open for other locales, despite the lack of qualifying jobs in this area. I really don't want to see anything bad happen to you because of overwork/work-related stress.
Job security is definitely important right now, but I suspect with your skills and smarts you could get something that would lead to less drowning. Reminds me of the Stevie Smith poem. That's not a good outcome, chica, though we've all been there in a particularly suffocating job. Good luck!
that poem is perfect. :) yeah, it would be great to find a happy medium. My last job was so boring I was posting blogs every day and totally on top of my email. This job, I haven't written back to some people in months.
for now... just trying to keep up. :)
Post a Comment