Nerfherder
Honorary Master
TBH you give up too easy.Yep I'm just going to be as blunt and honest as I can be right now (hence the title).
Hello everyone, my name is Ray and thinking about work makes me want to kill myself.
I'm placing this thread in the "health" section cause I think it goes here. So the level of frustration I'm feeling right now cannot be conveyed in any Human language.
It might have been slightly amplified by my turning 30 a couple days ago. So I lost my job in May of 2020 due to covid, was working in the film industry for 2.5 years.
Been trying to use the last several months since my retrenchment to figure out what it is I want to do and quite frankly I haven't made much headway. I have saved up a bit of money but eventually that will dwindle and I don't want that cause I worked long for it.
Now before any of you get the stupid idea that I'm a lazy loafer **** I want to give quick summary of the type of work I've done over the last 15 years.
- Bag packer and store room assistant at a grocery store. Started when I was 14 or 15. Was holiday work and did that for about 3 years.
- Sales rep at Incredible Corruption, was there for a month then quit. They only paid a basic salary after 3 months till then you had to survive on commission and being new and still learning, the other sales reps would get the sales. At least I got R200 that month
. Also I don't feel like I'm salesman material.
- Sales assistant at a printing store (3@1 Business Center) for 2 years, eventually promoted to Assistant Manager near the end and got my salary increased from R3000 to R3500. I quit cause customer service is cancer and I just couldn't do it anymore. Oh and the pay was insulting.
- DTP Operator at a printing press. Hands down the worst job I have had in my whole life. The department manager was just a horrible horrible woman. There were mornings I'd wake up and just sit in my bed wanting to die (no joke). Worked there for 1 year and then the company liquidated. The bosses told everyone for months that everything was fine even though people would come in and put stickers on everything with numbers (turns out it was auction numbers). Then they called us in one morning and said they are closing and that they can't pay us. I worked a month for free....
- Worked for my father as a manual labourer helping him with his renovation work. Not great work and hard. Did that for just over a year.
- Found a contract job of 6 months with a company that was digitizing the historical archives at the Parliament of South Africa. Saw some cool things and got to handle super old manuscripts from hundreds of years ago but photographing each and every page got boring FAST.
- Found a job at a Virtual Reality arcade helping snotty kids put on VR headsets and make sure they don't break them. Realized within the first couple hours that I have been through far to much to deal with this. Was only there for 1 day and left.
- Got a job at a film studio and got paid the highest I've ever been paid in any job I've had (16K). I was a Keyworder which is pretty much adding words to footage using Adobe Lightroom. The words help people find what they are looking for online on the various stock footage websites. The work became very very tedious because that's all I would do most of the time however, it was by far the most pleasant environment to work in cause the people and the bosses were really good to me. I was able to save up a lot of money cause I finally got a break. I worked there for 2.5 years and then covid came and the company shut down and I got retrenched...for the second time in my working life...
So I've been experimenting with ideas and recently (a week ago) started a YouTube channel (meditation music) but that's obviously going very slow and probably will for a while. Learning how to edit the videos was fun, haven't done that since I was a teenager making super low budget videos with my friend back in the mid 2000's.
I really like the van life movement and I want to get a small truck or van to live in so I can finally leave home, still stay with parents and yes I do pay rent (5k). I found a really cool 4 x 4 camper online (made a post in the vehicle section) and unfortunately it's well out of my price range which really hurts.
It's quite a horrible feeling when ever there's something I really want but its just out of reach and then I wonder why it was shown to me in the first place. And yes depression is something I have had to deal with since I can remember but it's not some chemical imbalance, I'm overwhelmingly frustrated, sad and angry that things are always difficult for me. There's a boat load of other stuff like family issues and horrible events that took place but I don't want this to get too long. So I'm at home everyday brainstorming what the hell I feel would make my spirit sing but the thought of getting a "job"....I just can't anymore.
Hello everyone. My name is Ray, I'm 30 years old and thinking about work makes me want to kill myself...
I get that people say you should do what you love but most of the time you just need to have a bit of stability and consistency.
Don't quit a job after one day - unless its the job is literally having to suck someone off.
Opportunities happen when you get out there and do something. I worked most of the same type of jobs that you have and yes they all sucked but you have to figure out how to make those jobs worth it. I met some really cool people who have gone one to do well in life while working in retail.
I'm only 40 so not going to try and preach here but the best thing I learned during those sh1tty jobs was how to work hard for nothing.
I worked at Mr Pice for R6:50 per hour, My first month at IC I got nothing, worked at a restaurant with no customers.. all of those places taught me lessons, they all guided me to my current career path.
I learnt what working for an effective manager was like and how to instantly recognise a useless git.
I learnt how to work hard from people who were trying to make a career out of that job.
I met people who would give me opportunities out of the industry I was in.
I also learnt that you could make something out of very little - there were guys making R20K+ at IC and it was all about how they made things work for them.
I'm talking from the POV of someone who had to face the same issues but came off better when I changed my attitude.
-Make contacts.
-do the grind.
-make it worth it.
When I was 30 I hand only really just started by career but didn't even realise it.
