Hello Mom and Dad, I’m trapped in a stupid office job and there is nothing that interest me about becoming a more specialised office-type worker using Excel or PowerPoint extensively. What I dream of doing is being a dancer and working with handicrafts and Adobe Creative to communicate the culture about the items, something about traditional cultures (I have a degree in anthropology) and revelling in beauty. I’m now trying to find a different job, but as much as I want (and need for various reasons) to leave this job I’m also deadly afraid of landing in another secretary-like job and I really don’t want that.
So I’m trying to put into my curriculum what I really like (basically adding Adobe skills after Mac and Office stuff) and also I have studied a language in school (I learned English later) that could be useful but that I absolutely hate. I don’t want to use that or work with that. I want to move to another country and I was thinking of putting basic proficiency in that language in my curriculum and skipping that other language entirely.
However, I get anguished. I don’t want to put myself out there, reveal my true heart and getting trashed. The language I want to learn is of a small country and it is laughable on a curriculum, just a random “why would anyone study that”. I’m also afraid that all the creative stuff will be pathetic like I’m a baby who likes to draw and I’m under the impression that creative jobs are all about pretending, make believe, marketing speech and very superficial and exploitative.
I have a very stable job, the classic company with a good name and an iron clad contract, the stable job for people with no flights of fancy. It is a horrible job for a number of personal reasons that have nothing to do with the content, and I need to leave. I don’t know what to do. I don’t have kids or mortgage, on the contrary I am with flatmates and I hate it. Also the home: there is nature around and the price is very good for a long term solid rental contract, so I’m like no way I’ll move, but living with other 6 people is misery.
I don’t want to reveal myself only to have recruiters mock me for being a baby who draws silly and speak a gibberish from a weird country… where I am people are close minded and dull and the other option is them being super ambitious and making up fancy realities (big city where people come to make it and get rich but in a conservative backward country).
I am a serious person, not frilly, very stable, I want a life of seriousness and unpretentious dedication, like a craftsman. I’m not sure how compatible that could be with the real world out there. People at dance classes for example want to go on social and clubbing and getting casted into videos. My idea is to be a devoted dancer like a sacred dancer in some culture. Am I incompatible with reality outside of myself? Sometimes I think that I should have been something like military because I love order, precision, discipline and dedication (but I don’t give a bird to this country where I just happen to have been born so…). There is no higher meaning in the kind of office jobs that I’m bound to do if I don’t stop this. This is not who I am.
Admittedly I’ve been raised in an abusive environment in which being myself was sacrificed to being the type of person that a narcissist parent wanted. I’m still very much in pain about not being a dancer and having missed out on A WHOLE LIFE as a true dancer. I’m going to cry so I’ll stop there. Things like airline pilot school, artistic high school and military have been cut in the bud when I was in my early teens because I had to do the Ancient Greek and Latin high school (or go to work at age 14… I was free to choose!). What is the point of life if you can’t be yourself? Now it’s too late and I don’t want plan B or crumbs.
I’m already in my early 40s so I’m stupidly late with everything and I probably don’t have a chance to be taken seriously ever. Here 40 is when people call themselves old and say nobody will hire them ever again. I don’t want my life to end like this. What should I do?
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Hi, I am happy to be your temporary gay internet dad for a minute!
I am really proud of you for achieving a stable office job that supports your ability to have not just the necessities of housing and food and transportation, but where you also are able to induce in arts and culture and your personal interests unrelated to work. In the current economy, that is a major achievement.
I am also so happy to hear that you are engaged with a culture that is often dismissed and ignored. You are able to see past what is popular and faddish and see what is important and interesting to you. That is a skill many labor to possess.
I also grew up in an abusive environment where I was to be molded into my parent’s idea of the child they always wanted, not to grow into my own personhood. You have really done amazing things already and I hope you’re giving yourself credit for that. I know you want more right now and you’re feeling distressed, but when you’re feeling better, remember that you have already done a lot.
Now I am going to be honest: I love me a stable office job. Leaving my abusive childhood home involved a stint of homelessness and a stable office job where I can at least pay the bills is something I grab with greedy paws and hold close to my heart. So I am not going to advise you leave it right now especially where you don’t have family to fall back on if something goes wrong.
(I mean, I found train hopping West Philly punks when I was down and out, but you don’t seem inclined to that lifestyle.)
That said. Engage in the sacred dance. Engage in the minority language community. Engage in the art. Engage in learning the craftsmanship of a traditional art you always wanted to learn how to make.
And when you do, I can pretty much guarantee you, most people engaged with you are not doing it as their primary profession. And most of the people who do have this kind of thing as a primary profession – I say as a guy who is lucky to know a professional blacksmith, two professional hand leather workers, and a professional glass lower – it almost always starts as a hobbit, becomes a money making hobby, becomes a second job, and then becomes a primary career. Most people stop somewhere before the last step.
I have a passion for historical lace knitting, primarily of northwestern Europe. It is a rather very specialized hobby. I keep it at the hobby level, mostly because no one who thinks “oh I could just buy an authentic hap shawl online” is also thinking “I will be paying a living wage for an item handmade from lace yarn that is 720 stitches for 4×4 inches and the shawl is 6ft square.”
You may find that you can get money for what you do if you choose a hobby less foolish than mine. And then you can see how you can start by augmenting your income until, if the day comes, it can be a career.