Stop Doing Things You Hate

Otherwise you'll become an expert at doing things you hate and you'll forget how to do the things you love.

It's really that simple.

How do I know? I've been working diligently at a career I dislike for the last 13 years. I'll talk about my example.

I hate my job. I hate going to work. I almost hate doing my design work (which I used to love before), owing to all the things surrounding my work. In my old workplace I used to be very close to my co-workers. At my new workplace, I get along with most of my co-workers but to my immediate co-workers, I am perceived as a threat so they dislike me intensely. One coworker no longer acknowledges my presence and refuses to speak to me, no longer replies to my greetings or engages me in any way. Another one has decided that listening to my evaluations of the project and taking into account what I need in terms of resources will make his life harder, so he just ignores me. But at least he is polite.

I am also working with a few corporate bullies that carry out bullying as a part of their company-wide policy (to make sub-consultants look bad and to make themselves – the prime consultant – look good).

The client hates our consulting team due to past incompetencies and under-delivery on past projects.

And I walked into this big stinking pile of shit 6 months ago with my face aimed at the shit-launching trebuchet.

At the end of these fateful 6 months I have given up hopes that I can rescue this project with will power, determination and help from management. I am at that point where I've realized management just wants a warm body to distract the client while they rake in the cash. Too bad I care about the deliverable. "Pfft what a fucking idiot!" They won't give me resources. They won't negotiate with the client for time or money. Therefore I'm out. I gave it 6 months.

However, this article is about how the decision to stay at a horrid job is bleeding into my everyday life. Today I went to a restaurant and ordered some food I never tried before. I was quite hungry, so in retrospect maybe I should have ordered something safe. Anyway, what showed up in front of me was supposedly food on a plate, but it looked like a stinking pile of shit. When I took a bite of it, it tasted like a stinking pile of shit. It even smelled like a big stinking pile of shit. It reminded me of my job.

Guess what I did? Did I return it to the kitchen? Did I politely stop eating it, pay and leave? Nope. None of the above. I ate it till I was full. I was nauseous. I was disgusted. I could feel this absolutely disgusting dish swimming in my stomach and I wanted to hurl.

Why did I do that? Why did I eat something that was clearly something that I did not want to eat?

Because my brain is now accustomed to doing things it detests. I have to think hard to remember a single thing I enjoy doing. I've been doing things I hate for so long that I actually stopped noticing. Reminiscent of the frog that slowly boils in gradually boiling water... poor frog doesn't notice that the temperature of his “pond” is rising to the point of cooking him.

Today I remembered that in the past 10 years, if I bought some food that I wanted to try, had it and hated it, I would save it in the freezer for later. And I would have it later. One day I looked in my freezer and it was full of shit I did not want to eat, yet I would eat it occasionally. The worst days were when there was no food in the house and so I had to resort to this freezer full of crap that I did not want to eat, and because these things had been in the freezer for so long, it had the freezer smell. Absolutely disgusting. And because I was tired and hungry, I ate it. And I've been doing this for years.

Back to the restaurant today. After eating my fill of this stinking pile of shit, I politely asked for it to be packed up. As I ruminated about this incident, I couldn't understand why I was doing this to myself. After 10 minutes, while driving home, I felt sick. The smell of the food in the car was making me feel sick. I stopped my car at the nearest strip mall, found a garbage bin and threw the leftovers out. I walked back to my car, opened the car door, and the whole car smelt of this crap. I left all the windows open for 10-15 minutes to let the nauseous smell out. Now the only memory of this shit crap dish I ate was in my stomach and I was digesting this food and making it a part of me.

DO THE THINGS YOU LOVE

Because if you don't, you will get good at doing things you hate. And you'll forget that you even like to do anything.

Don't digest the crap you go through everyday at work and make it a part of you.

When I was eating that pile of crap, these were the reasons I was doing it:

• I didn't want to offend the restauranter/waiter
• I didn't want the money/food to go to waste
• I was too embarrassed to admit that I ordered something disgusting
• I wasn't going to be a quitter

I noted how all those thoughts above were also the reason why I was staying at the crappy crappola job I have.

I started to think again in the car. What ARE the things I love? What do I love to eat? What do I love to do? My days are so full of painful things that I hate, that I honestly struggle to remember things I love. And when I do remember them, I can't trust myself. Do I really love those things or do I just feign love in order to get approval from others? I know scores of people that spend uncountable hours in societies and extracurricular activities they detest just so it looks good on their resume.

Isn't life too short to waste time like that? What fucking society;s opinion am I worried about? Who gives a shit?

I don't know what to say if you ask whether we should do some things we hate like exercising and eating right. All I can think of saying is that you really shouldn't have to hate an activity that keeps you fit and healthy. Can you find a sport you actually enjoy? Can you eat something healthy that isn't fucking disgusting? There are many choices out there. Explore.

Taxes, bills just need to be paid. This isn't what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about making long term choices that define who we become. I'm talking about being honest with yourself and being a genuine you. We are going to die, soon. I don't want to look back and say, “Yeah, I didn't even TRY doing things I loved because I was too busy paying the bills. Yay me. Now I don't get a second chance.”

The Silent and Enduring Cost of Workaholism

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

The Physical and Mental Toll

A toll must be paid to the bridge troll of workaholism. The price I have paid, other than the loss in quality of life, have been the ones below:

Self worth

10 years is a long time. It's a quarter of your work life - the most valuable and productive years of your life. In those 10 years, I personally have attached nearly my entire self-worth to the company I worked for and the work that I do. It took me a couple of years to disentangle my self worth from the very first company I worked for. Then, once I landed in a completely different company and got exploited beyond measure, I had to reject this profession based self-worth. "It really cannot be possible that the intrinsic value of man is linked to the work done by him", I thought.

There is a dichotomy in me. I thought that I did not judge the people around me based on their profession. I truly believe my CAD tech team mates are of equal value as I am, an accredited professional engineer. But when thoughts of owning a business and doing sales work crossed my mind, I felt threatened.

"Where would I be if I was laid off?", was the next question in my mind. I work in a city where the economy is primarily oil-based. It is August 2015 and a significant number of engineers have been laid off. All these shocked and desperate people are painfully holding on to the hope that oil-prices will rise, and their jobs will return. I imagine that there are a few amongst them who have based their self worth on their qualifications, credentials, work ethic and accomplishments.

But you cannot possibly be living from a place of truth, if you base your self worth on your profession, your gender, your race, your net worth, your country, your friends, your enemies....

Of course, the choice is always yours. But if and when your profession goes down the shitter, so will your self worth. How terribly fragile.

Yet society is forever reinforcing the belief that our professions make us who we are. Our money makes us, our accomplishments make us, our jobs make us, our toil make us. That cannot possibly be true. What happens to us when any of those are gone? Money is a will-o'-the-wisp. Accomplishments are in the heads of people, and people are fickle. Jobs are lost on a moment's notice. Toil? If our hard work made us, then are we to condemn all members of the population that are unable to work due to circumstances and conditions beyond their control?

I have witnessed several hard working and competent co-workers wrongfully dismissed or laid off, and all I wanted to tell them is, "There is more to you than this job". There is more to you than the opinions of  the people that exploit you. When appropriate, I called them up and told them just that.

Viktor Frankl is a personal hero. I honour and respect his life and have read his life's works over and over again because his words give me hope and direction. He says things so deeply profound that it shines a light into the very deepest part of me that recognizes truth.

The following is an excerpt from the Introduction of 'Man's Search for Meaning',

"Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.
 There is a a scene from Arthur Miller's play Incident at Vichy in which an upper middle class professional man appears before the nazi authority that has occupied his town and shows his credentials: his university degrees, his letters of reference from prominent citizens, and so on. The nazi asks him, "Is that everything you have?" The man nods. The nazi throws it all in the waste basket and tells him: "Good, now you have nothing." The man, whose self-esteem had always depended on the respect of others, is emotionally destroyed."

I felt a similar sense of loss when I graduated from university with my degree in electrical engineering and no one wanting to hire me in a shattered hi-tech economy. My degree wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. I felt as if the 4-5 years of education and training was of no value at all. The big badge I received by paying a university a stack of money and working hard to finish all my courses, was completely invisible.

So shortly thereafter, after being (in my opinion) underemployed, we moved to a city where the economy was better, and I found a more challenging job. I worked so hard for the last 10 years that my health suffered immensely. Both my physical health and my mental health. And now the economy here is in its death throes. I have a secure job, but I am working 80 hours a week and I'm being psychologically and emotionally bullied by aggressive coworkers.

It has forced me to question the reasons why I'm at my job. And the answer has boiled down to self worth. Who will I be if I leave my job?

I have decided to leave my job regardless of my emotional and philosophical opinions. Unemployment is better than psychological undoing.

Relationships

My sibling and father are engineers as well. My sibling was so terribly exploited that I worried for his life. He stopped eating daily meals, stopped sleeping and also stopped taking showers. It was an unraveling. How did my sibling's micromanaging boss justify this treatment? They didn't bother. If the engineer takes on responsibility, the company does nothing to look after them. As I write this down, it really is silly to think that a corporation would look after the well being of a human being, isn't it?

I worried for my sibling. I worried for my relationship with my spouse. I was getting more and more estranged from my spouse. Evenings had become a regular occurrence of me breaking a promise to be home on time. My spouse is very kind. But my actions did destroy our workout schedule, our grocery shopping schedule, and our household chore schedule. I felt entitled to be excepted from household chores because I was at work all the time. My spouse disagreed but did all the work anyway. This went on for 5 years. I acted like an asshole.

Health

Gaining weight was a common occurrence at work. People just resorted to making fun of themselves every time they gained another 10 lbs.

But I went a few steps further. Not only did I gain weight, I also injured my back. First time I did it, I couldn't move for 15 days. Then, a few months later, I did it again. And again. Thrice in three years.

The shock and helplessness I felt when I injured my back the first time was palpable. I was isolated and knew that no one could help me. It was my body and my actions had produced this result. I watched all my friends and relatives wring their hands (metaphorically speaking) in desperation trying to help me while I slowly recovered. And then almost immediately after recovery, I resumed my 80 hour work week despite making personal promises and public promises of never working more than 40 hours a week.

Peace Of Mind

I have memories of being mentally at peace when I was a child. I even remember extended periods of time being at peace when I was doing non-engineering jobs. But ever since I got a job in consulting engineering, the peace of mind went out the window. I charged 40 hours a week to the client, but I was working every waking hour. At first I thought it would stop once I got more experience. It didn't stop. It got worse. The more experience I got, the more reasons there were to exploit me.

The Toll has been paid, Now what?

Now I'm left with me. Searching for a self-worth that is unrelated to my work. I feel like a person in the dark. The hopelessness of the exercise is only surpassed by the fear that there is no needle to be found in the haystack