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Unmotivated, hate my job
nixmix06
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
Hello all! This is my first post in the forums so forgive me of any rule violations, I swear I'll learn 
I'll preface my issue with a little bit of background on me and my overall situation. I am 22 going on 23, college drop out with a ridiculous amount of student debt, no familial support whatsoever and I've been living with my girlfriend for almost 3 years (who also dropped out of college, has outstanding loans and quite a bit of credit card debt that we are working on together). As such, we live paycheck to paycheck.
As the title says, I absolutely hate my bank job. I've only been at the job for 6 months but it is completely mind numbing and frustrating. Given my situation, I can't just quit without finding something else first but I don't want another dead end customer service gig. My passion lies in film (editing, specifically) but not only am I in a terrible market for something like that I like any training and have no professional experience in the field. Every job I have had up to this point has only been able to hold my interedt for a couple of months before becoming abhorrent and I can honestly say it's no way to live.
Ultimately my question to this forum is simple: what do I do? Do I stick it out, play it safe at the bank until my debts are cleared?Do I find something else? Or do I throw caution to the wind and pursue my passion (and probably lose my girlfrirnd, someone I have immense love and respect for, not to mention a lot of history)?
I'll preface my issue with a little bit of background on me and my overall situation. I am 22 going on 23, college drop out with a ridiculous amount of student debt, no familial support whatsoever and I've been living with my girlfriend for almost 3 years (who also dropped out of college, has outstanding loans and quite a bit of credit card debt that we are working on together). As such, we live paycheck to paycheck.
As the title says, I absolutely hate my bank job. I've only been at the job for 6 months but it is completely mind numbing and frustrating. Given my situation, I can't just quit without finding something else first but I don't want another dead end customer service gig. My passion lies in film (editing, specifically) but not only am I in a terrible market for something like that I like any training and have no professional experience in the field. Every job I have had up to this point has only been able to hold my interedt for a couple of months before becoming abhorrent and I can honestly say it's no way to live.
Ultimately my question to this forum is simple: what do I do? Do I stick it out, play it safe at the bank until my debts are cleared?Do I find something else? Or do I throw caution to the wind and pursue my passion (and probably lose my girlfrirnd, someone I have immense love and respect for, not to mention a lot of history)?
nixmix06 on
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The only thing that sucks more than having a bad job is having no job at all. If you want to follow the film road, go on! But do it responsibly, nothing prevents you from working and editing film on your off hours. You said you live paycheck to paycheck... what are you going to do when you quit and you realize that you need new equipment to edit? if you can't afford to pay bills you can't afford to buy an Mac G5. You have bills to pay, and land lords don't accept passion.
Edit:
To answer your ultimate question: Quit your bank job when you find another job. Do film on the side until you find a film job that pays. Save like crazy, film jobs are scarce. You may go 6 months without a gig.
I was going to recommend this very thing, but then noticed the OP was a college dropout. Some more info on why he droped out would be nice.
Otherwise, could the OP maybe try interning/working part time at anywhere that deals with films. Even if it's just some local stuff it would be some experience.
Also, maybe you can take night classes or something while staying at your job. You'll get a sense of progress and an outlet for your mental energies, which could make the rest of your day more tolerable.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Like MagicToaster said, whats the plan for paying off the debts? If they are federal loans, have you looked into consolidating the debt. It won't save you any money (as it stretches out the term) but it will buy you some breathing room to pay down the other debts.
You spend around 50 hours at work a week (including travel) that leave you with 118 hours to sleep, start working on film in your spare time (to get some experience and maybe some fodder for a resume) and maybe pick up an even more mind numbing job stocking shelves to help pay off that debt.
It blows, I know. But it only has to suck for as long as you want to drag it out for.
There is nothing unique about not being happy with your employment. Acting rashly as a result of it would be very silly.
While statements like this are mostly true, I'd qualify this by saying that its also a gross oversimplification of the issue.
In my experience, I found that there is a huge difference between different working conditions. I worked for three seperate companies over the last two and a half years, and at each one I performed the same, exact, job which doesn't change much from company to company (also in finance, legal finance). The differences between the three companies were immense.
That is to say that "the job", in my experience, has little to do with one's fulfillment in a real sense. Of much more importance is the working community, work expectations and even location. I despised the first job I had, tolerated the second and am now more happy than not at the third company. The differences in my day to day work are very slim, but the differences in my environment, coworkers and even the location of my office make the lion's share of the difference.
"What you do" is, inevitably, not going to be what you "want to do", especially when you're younger.
The best one can do is to use the time of secure employment to send out tons of resumes and afford to be picky. When I wanted to leave the second company I was at, I took my time and was more picky than I would have been otherwise. When you don't have a job you need any job, quick. When you have a job you can turn down a hundred offers.
More than anything, changes like this take time. The longer you wait to try to do something else the longer it will be until you do something else.
I'd also be remiss if I didn't at least mention that if this pervades more than your work, you may benefit from seeing someone to talk about it. Work can become a huge scapegoat for problems and issues that have little to do with work.
Best of luck.
Also, do you have any finished credits? If you were to go back to school, how long would it take you to complete degree? You'd have a bigger array of jobs available to you with a degree.
Also, someone above said the only thing worse than a shitty job is no job...well, that's not entirely so in my experience. A shitty job can take over your life. It makes you not want to get out of bed in the morning and, in the evening, makes you feel angry and powerless. The stress is generates is awful.
If you're in an okay place mentally and you have six months rent in the bank, see if you can't take a day or two off, get out of your element, and do some hard thinking about what you want to do. I suggest getting out of your element (ie. go to a park or someplace other than home) because being in a new place frequently stimulates new thinking.
Also, if you enjoy film editing, you might want to try some local marketing agencies (you're looking for full-service shops that have video capabilities, not just PR firms) to see if you can pick up a short term internship or a coordinator position. The pay, if any, will be shite but you'll get some good experience which you can use to land work elsewhere. This is what having six months of rent is for
Whatever you end up doing, best of luck and don't despair -- there's tons of people here willing to lend and ear and offer advice.
Once upon a time I wanted to be a writer. I got a job part-time as a tech support agent, to pay the bills. It shifted into full time and eventually into a role as instructor. I took a step to the left and became a specialized consultant within the same company, which was more or less a position I created to fill. That developed into a kind of public relations role, which lead into a similar kind of executive relations role. I've since shifted out of that particular skill set, but I still get called in from time to time.
I recently had a chance to revisit the call-floor, and wouldn't you know it, there are still people there that I knew from before, doing the same things and complaining about the same role they've been doing for years now. I'm sure if one were to ask, they would say that what they do is 'dead-end', and perhaps for them it is.
But its not. Not really. They just aren't capable of making it into anything else. What I am getting at, without meaning to sound harsh, is that every job on this green earth is an epic shit-ton of mind-numbing soul crushing work, and it is how you apply yourself to that work that determines the amount of enjoyment you get out of it.
'Film-making' for example, seems like fun from the outside, but in reality, is an epic shit-ton of work. I assure you, you will bring every ounce of mediocrity and boredom with you to that work should you ever make the shift. Because work is work. All work is work, it's like the universal constant.
So my advice is; If you are bored, think bigger. Play the game. Learn the positions above you and beside you. Talk shop. Find out where the next bit of money is. Find out what you could do to make just a bit extra, to be a bit better, to be more effective. Be competitive with yourself. Make work something you are fucking awesome at. You'll enjoy yourself so much more- everybody loves doing the things they rock at.
That is the skill to develop, not the details of the tasks and chores, but the ability to take up any bit of work and produce self-generated awesomeness. You get this particular chunk of life skills leveled up, and no matter what you do, you'll do just fine.
DrFrylock is the same, but his visits are even more rare.
Thusly, my advice to you is the same advice Freddy Wong once gave. Get a camera and just start making movies. You don't even need a dedicated film camera. A lot of still cameras these days can record surprisingly decent HD footage. Hell, get FRAPS and start making gaming movies. Make frag videos, put together something like Clear Skies (Eve Online fan film, it's pretty good). You can easily build a portfolio and learn the art all on your own. Art schools, in all honesty, love to feed people a lot of bullshit. They're good as a resource if you've already got it as a passion, understand the industry you're going into, have a running portfolio, and have a vague idea of how to market yourself. Wasting money on one only because you think you like film editing is a baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad idea. I've seen a lot of people go to schools to learn things like 3d modeling/animation and so forth with no real prior experience only to end up bombing hard.
DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER
Be VERY careful here. Why the hell are you paying down her debt?
It was a number of things. Moved out on my own after my second semester of college, had to go full time at work and that caused some scheduling issues. I tried to work with my employer at the time, but the company was rigid. Tried online classes, hated that.
Yes, the debt is in her name but it isn't just her debt. The majority of it was things for the both of us, and I'm not gonna be an ass and force her to pay for that herself. My own credit card debt is the same. We've just consolidated everything. It's made budgeting easier by having one joint bank account that we pay all our bills out of, not to mention a great accountability tool to keep each other in check. Not gonna lie, we both have a tendency to live outside our means. Which leads to my next response...
Believe me, I realize my decisions are my own and I don't place the blame on anyone but myself. I've made a lot of mistakes in quick succession and I'm paying for it.
A lot of you have suggested maintaining film as a hobby until something can come of it and I've taken that under advisement. I'm just going to try to have fun with it for now, try to build a portfolio and shop myself around when I'm ready to enter the business.
Many of you also have said that "work is work". I don't shy from hard work. I work as hard as I possibly can every day. What I seek is satisfaction, I suppose. Maybe a better question to pose would have been "how can I find satisfaction with my job?"
Sarcastro, your entire post really made a lot of sense to me and probably answered this question already, so thank you. Honestly, thank you to everybody for your input.
The country is facing the a terrible economic situation and I do count myself very lucky to have a job, especially one that isn't minimum wage. I wanted to take a couple of days to think about my situation, see what people had to say and try to build a plan. I think I'm going to try and stick it out where I am and make the situation work for me.
Something that has been mentioned before, but I'll bring it up again, is that there is nothing whatsoever preventing you from "shopping around" for another job. If you have the "I'm going to stick it out" attitude, you have nothing to lose and, even better, you can afford to be picky about your search. I usually suggest that the best way to get a job is to send out at least 10 applications/resumes a week. In your situation you could send out applications only to jobs that are "reaches" or which you believe would be far more meaningful than the bank work you're doing now.
At times, my job sucks. It can be soul-crushing & mind-numbing, despite also being difficult, challenging, and exhilarating. That has been how it's been with ALL of my jobs except one very low-paying job.
What I've done to compensate is get very into my hobbies (making wood-carved ink prints, bicycling, civics) and as a result have gotten better jobs/better opportunities/much better health/and in general am a more well-rounded person.
I think we have a theme in our country now that work provides satisfaction, but when you look at our parents & their parents, that wasn't really the case. Their families provided satisfaction, or their social activities.
I think for you, you should really try to find other people into film/acting in your area (maybe with meetup?) and do some editing for them. I am on the board of 3 non-profits, and I can honestly say one thing we've needed more times than I can count is someone to edit film for our marketing efforts. We don't have much money, so we'd love a volunteer.
Doing that can definitely get you some experience, it can be great networking (some of the people who sit on boards also run companies that have money to pay you for your work!), and it lets you do something you love.