Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Fading Dreams?

Is it wrong to give up on dreams? Not giving up, exactly, but trying to reorient my mind to match the circumstances. Okay, giving up.
Which dreams? You may well ask. Not my core dream of getting published, that is still full-steam ahead. But the idea of a dream job. The hope of getting out of my dead end job, that could very well fall out from underneath me at any time. The dream of getting into a secure job with good benefits and better pay. A job that pays me enough to survive on, and maybe even get ahead a little. I think my hopes of a better job have tanked aong with the economy. Is it really so bad? I'm not sure, I haven't quite made up my mind.
On the plus side: I work easy hours, have weekends off, know the personalities of those around me and know how to manage them well, decent medical insurance, the pay doesn't totally suck.
On the down side: It is a dead-end job with a floundering company, the pay isn't quite enough to live on, I am surrounded by emotional vampires, the recession/depression has hit our industry particulary hard so the bosses and all the customers are black-holes of any positive energies, and worst of all it bores me out of my mind.
But as I whine about my job I have friends losing theirs. Many friends have lost their jobs and/or taken pay cuts. And there are so few jobs to be found. I know I should be thankful to have a job, and I am. But why is it I can't make myself feel any enthusiasm about it? Oh yeah, it has a lot to do with the emotional vampire issue mentioned earlier. I have spent the better part of the last two plus years shoring up the morale of those around me; bosses, coworker and customers. I spend so much emotional energy trying to talk people off of the ledge that I have very little positive energy left for my own sanity and psyche. And then I feel guilty because I have no desire to socialize outside of work. I can't help that, all of my daily ration of social is used and overused at work to the point that I run on a social deficit.
So this brings me back to my initial question, is it wrong to give up on dreams? Am I really giving up? Maybe I am just falling back and regrouping in a effort to cling to what little sanity I have remaining. The continual rejection of the job market has felt like one bitch-slap after another. I try to pull myself up, only to be continually knocked back down. Maybe, just maybe, if I take some of the energy I am wasting on the futile and perpetually disappointing job search and focus that energy on positive, creative outlets I may be able to regain some of my marginal sanity and balance.
To this end, I am looking into creative, alternative income sources. Namely ETSY. I think I will return to toymaking, at least on a part time scale. Just enough to bring in a few extra dollars to make up the gap between salary and rising cost of living. It is a positive, creative expenditure of energy that will generate it's own positive energy as well. A self-sustained, perpetual motion, energy generator.
Now to just find the time....

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