Soul Balloon

A few days ago I wrote Joe an email where I said that my job makes me feel like my soul is slowly leaking out. Very slowly, like there’s a pin prick in my consciousness, so it’s taking a very long time but it will eventually reach a point where it’s empty. I was definitely being dramatic, but I started wondering how much of it was hyperbolic and how close it was to how I really feel.

The reality is that it’s not just my job. A lot of it is living here and being far away and not having many people around who affect me in a positive way. I thought about me and was saddened to realize that I don’t really like who I am right now in a lot of ways, and the most depressing realization was that I’m starting to feel like everything I do is just trying to find ways to waste time until I die. (How’s that for dramatic?) Like, the way my job is really boring and a lot of times there’s nothing to do so I just read boring crap I don’t even care about on the internet to waste time until I can go home? That’s the same way I’m living my life. Just continuing on doing boring crap I don’t care about until I get to die and be done with it, which is pretty depressing for a 26 year old (obviously).

So (once again obviously) something needs to change. But I’m very apprehensive about it. Change can be scary. I’m worried about a lot of things, but the biggest worry is, “What if I make the change and regret it?” What if, as crappy as things seem to be now, they will seem not so bad in retrospect? I think everything always seems better in retrospect, so that will obviously happen (time and age color things differently) but what if things are way worse afterwards? Am I just being greedy by wanting more out of my life? I know I’m lucky in a lot of ways. I make pretty good money doing something that’s not horribly challenging so I can live a secure middle-class lifestyle. It sounds good, and I know it is good, but I’m not happy.

I am happy in spurts and in various parts of my life. I love Joe and I love Ramona. They are so important to me and make me feel like a worthwhile person. But I am just not happy overall. I’m unsatisfied with how life is going right now. I need something else. I’m just worried that I’m going to take myself out of a not so great, not so bad situation and end up in a really bad situation.

But when I think of it optimistically, or even logically, changing things can’t really end too badly. The scariest plan is to move without having jobs. Meaning, moving to the Midwest where jobs are scarce and we have been unable to procure jobs thus far. But I think a big part of the reason we haven’t procured jobs is the distance. (Actually I know it is because I’ve had several phone interviews that went from awesome to ‘you live where and need how long to get here?’ pretty fast.) But the idea of not having a job, even with the fat cash we have in savings, and even knowing that we wouldn’t have to pay any bills but the car payment and insurance because we’d be staying with Joe’s parents, is a scary idea, especially factoring in the whole crappy economy job situation side of things. And even then I wouldn’t worry about it except that we have a child. That really scares me. But I think we can get crappy jobs while we look for good jobs. I think good things can happen. And I know I can’t keep going on this way much longer.

For now, I’ll just keep applying for jobs and hoping something happens and I can forget all these worries. But it’s apparent that we need to make a change one way or the other and preferably sometime before my soul is completely drained.