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Wage Slaves: What keeps you going in life?

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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Not sure if this is a unique situation given the GAF demographic but I'll weigh in here.

I'm currently a wage slave because I'm trapped and don't have any other options. I'm 31, married with 2 kids, a dog, and a house, and a middle-class household income (Canada). If you're into the 5 stages of wealth, I would peg myself at Financial Strategy (stage 2), and generally in a place where I should feel secure. The issue comes with responsibility to my family, as I would love to go back to school and complete switch industries but I don't have the financial freedom to do so without putting 3 others at risk. You find yourself working towards goal after goal, eventually trapping yourself into a situation where your only option for progress is to suck the corporate cock and dive deeper and deeper into the wage-y life.

I'm incredibly lucky (and privileged) to be in the situation I'm in, yet I have no motivation to do anything both inside and out of work. Everything that I used to enjoy has effectively been sucked out of my life and now acts as a brief distraction that I find myself unable to become emotionally invested in. This also affects my desire to learn new skills and move into a different line of work, something that I've been extremely successful in doing all of my life.

I guess it's just a question of discipline and my lack of apathy for my own life at this point.

Is there any option to do some of the training/reskilling online? Might I suggest that your best way to get to a point where you can get back to learning new skills might be to just start with super-tiny things, and make a routine of them. For instance, if coding was your goal you might want to do 1 challenge on hackerrank every day during your lunch break. If you're struggling mentally it might also be worth taking some time to have a look at whether you're eating right, whether getting up earlier and doing a bit of exercise might put a spring in your step, that kind of thing. Your mental health is of course affected by events and situations, but it's also affected by your body's chemistry, so it's worth taking the time to get that right.
 

GeorgPrime

Banned
As a wage slave, a majority of the time that you're awake is devoted to your job, either directly or indirectly. When you're awake, you're most likely either getting ready for work, traveling to work, working, traveling home from work, and cleaning yourself up as a result of being at work (e.g. showering, putting away the clothes that you wore to work, cleaning the dishes from and with which you ate your lunch while at work, etc). Hence, you're left with very little time to yourself; at most, you probably have three hours to yourself before you have to go to sleep...in order to be well rested for your next shift at work. I imagine that leisure time is even more limited when you have children. Of course, there are the meager two days off from work that you're granted every week, but those fly by, as they're spent doing chores such as laundry, food shopping, mowing the lawn, etc. Hence, considering how little time you get to yourself as a wage slave, what keeps you going in life? Why wake up the next morning or evening just to repeat the same, monotonous routine that you've engaged in for years or perhaps even decades? What is there to look forward to? Also, in regard to having children, why do so considering that they're going to grow up just to become a wage slave like you?

- I had a secure job with lifetime contract....
- I quit that job to create a company and become a business developer and to create the worls first data transaction app on blockchain.
- Then corona came i lost the job due to incompetent investors.
- Now i cant find a normal job because everyone is saying "Due to corona..."
- At the moment iam creating another app with my brother. We already have several customers, we made a specific medical deal with our app and iam working on a partnership with a famous restaurant critic.

Fuck normal jobs and fuck corona.
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
- I had a secure job with lifetime contract....
- I quit that job to create a company and become a business developer and to create the worls first data transaction app on blockchain.
- Then corona came i lost the job due to incompetent investors.
- Now i cant find a normal job because everyone is saying "Due to corona..."
- At the moment iam creating another app with my brother. We already have several customers, we made a specific medical deal with our app and iam working on a partnership with a famous restaurant critic.

Fuck normal jobs and fuck corona.

Good luck - hope you come out the other side in decent shape. Corona is fucking a lot of people right now.
 

Terce

Member
Is there any option to do some of the training/reskilling online? Might I suggest that your best way to get to a point where you can get back to learning new skills might be to just start with super-tiny things, and make a routine of them. For instance, if coding was your goal you might want to do 1 challenge on hackerrank every day during your lunch break. If you're struggling mentally it might also be worth taking some time to have a look at whether you're eating right, whether getting up earlier and doing a bit of exercise might put a spring in your step, that kind of thing. Your mental health is of course affected by events and situations, but it's also affected by your body's chemistry, so it's worth taking the time to get that right.

I have every opportunity to train and reskill online, and given my current position I have free access to a massive catalogue of online learning resources. Hackerrank is a great suggestion, I spent a lot of time going through that years ago and never followed up, same with various other online programs like FCC and the Odin Project.

I can say that diet and exercise are definitely not the issue, through 10 years in the military I developed a regular running and workout routine that I stick with as a part of my morning routine.

Honestly, I need a friend like that guy who texted his buddy "fat fuck" every day to get him to lose weight. I cannot be accountable to myself because of my mental state, and it's too easy to brush off online connections by not turning on the computer or logging in. Idonno man, it's probably just another down period in the roller coaster but this one feels like it's been going on a long time, long enough that I don't remember what it's like to be up.
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
I have every opportunity to train and reskill online, and given my current position I have free access to a massive catalogue of online learning resources. Hackerrank is a great suggestion, I spent a lot of time going through that years ago and never followed up, same with various other online programs like FCC and the Odin Project.

I can say that diet and exercise are definitely not the issue, through 10 years in the military I developed a regular running and workout routine that I stick with as a part of my morning routine.

Honestly, I need a friend like that guy who texted his buddy "fat fuck" every day to get him to lose weight. I cannot be accountable to myself because of my mental state, and it's too easy to brush off online connections by not turning on the computer or logging in. Idonno man, it's probably just another down period in the roller coaster but this one feels like it's been going on a long time, long enough that I don't remember what it's like to be up.

Glad to hear you have some resources. Might I suggest something like setting up an alarm on your phone? The next step is that for whatever activity you choose, you have a routine, where for instance if you're doing it on your laptop you absolutely close any tabs that aren't directly related to the task at hand. Maybe even go as far as a linux dual boot to avoid any games, where the linux partition is super-pared-down to only the most basic things, just the bits you need and nothing else. Hide your phone while you're doing this of course, mobile phones are the devil. One other thought - it might be worth seeing if your wife can help with the discipline, ie hiding your phone and keeping the kids away from you for your period of learning every day. Treat it as if you're at work basically.

Basically if no-one else is around to kickstart you (is there nobody you could ask to text you "lazy fuck" or whatever to get you to do stuff?) then you're going to have to kickstart yourself, as hard as that can be. For a small fee I can send motivational PMs on GAF calling you a lazy cunt.
 
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Northeastmonk

Gold Member
What helps is working around positive people. I've worked in room full of negative thinking people and it would send anyone out the window. I complained to management about it and they didn't do much except give me their concerned speech. I left that job, but that was horrible. I found a job with a lot more positive attitudes and my drive home every day is a whole lot better.

A lot of it is staying positive. I feel like "negative thinking" is considered a normal way of thinking in America. We have nothing pushing us to do better because life feels constructed in a way that feels meaningless, pointless, or there's nothing more to gain. I sometimes like to receive a pat on the back. Words of encouragement is part of my love language. I do better if I receive an acknowledgement for my actions.

I also think its hard to have a drive for something as you get older. Its either about your own personal drive or its something you want to achieve. In high school and college it was all about graduating or making an A on an exam. The long term goal was getting a job. Now that you have a job (with or without college), there's nothing except attending that job every single day. Where's the drive once you're over the whole job thing? A house, a spouse, kids, and a paycheck. Its all a checkbox that doesn't exactly bring you personal satisfaction everyday (not that family can't help because they sure are wonderful). Society can make you feel like its just a bunch of old dudes, complaining about politics, and a bunch of stuff that feels pointless.
 

MetalAlien

Banned
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