The Life Slump.

It has come into my field of awareness that I’m going to have to work almost every day of my life for almost the rest of my life. And I’m struggling to cope with this.

This is one of those facts in life that we are all aware of deep down, but mostly try to avoid thinking about. Why is it that we as a people have created a society in which we need to do things which take up a lot of time and energy in order to earn enough money to survive?

It isn’t even that we’re doing these jobs just because they need to be done or for the satisfaction of doing them. We are working merely as a means of survival. And this concpt is making me miserable.

There has to be a better way to live our lives that doesn’t revolve around working 40+ hours per week just to earn enough money to pay for rent, bills, and groceries.

I want to do more with my life than just work. I want to have time to learn and to grow as a person. And I know I’m not the only one.

I do have a job that I enjoy. But it is also exhausting. I work in a nursery forty hours a week, taking care of babies from as young as four months. It’s tiring. Not only that, but I commute for an hour or so each way. So between the time of getting up and getting ready for work, and finally getting home, I have been on my feet for nearly fourteen hours (usually I work nine hours for four days with a one hour break, and on the fifth day I only work four hours without a break).

So naturally I am incredibly tired from a long and hectic day. It’s not as though I have a sedentary job where I get to at least physically rest if not mentally rest. I am using my body and my brain all day. I am walking or running about, I am lifting heavy objects (i.e.: babies), and I have to be very aware of everything that is going on, for the safety of the children.

The commuting is equally as exhausting as my job because I often don’t get a seat due to rush hour chaos, and I have to make at least two changes as part of my journey. Really I should have considered the complexity of the commute when choosing this job, however, with my one year anniversary of this job coming up this week, it feels redundant to bother doing anything about it now.

Maybe if I weren’t in the process of beginning a year long qualification at work then I would consider looking for a new job nearer to home. For now that will have to wait until my qualification is complete (a matter which is really out of my hands right now considering I signed all the paperwork for starting the qualification at the end of January, and more than five weeks later I have heard nothing back about it other than to request another copy of my ID because their copy wasn’t usable for some reason).

Anyway, I just feel really lost and stuck right now. I don’t feel that I have much control over my life at the minute. I do love my job, I really do. But it is such an inconvenience to my right now. Maybe if I just didn’t have to spend so much time commuting then it wouldn’t feel so bad, but it’s tiring me the fuck out. And even if I had a more relaxing journey to work then I could maybe do something which feels productive, but the most I can do these days is read a book, and as I said in my previous post, I don’t really feel like doing that at the moment.

I just want a job that doesn’t take up too much of my time, that’s easy to get to, and allows me enough free time to actually do things, because currently my only free time is at weekends, and I spend much of that time catching up on sleep because, despite going to bed early on work nights, I still feel completely exhausted by the end of the week.

Clearly this is not a situation that I will maintain for a particularly long time. In reality, as soon as I’m qualified I’m going to get a job that I can walk to, then I’ll be able to wake up early out of choice rather than necessity, then I will be able to use my time to achieve things which will make me happy.

I also feel like having a rant about not earning enough money to live alone, but perhaps I should save that for another time. Lol.

Love, Bobbi. Xx.

The End of a Stressful Week.

This week at work has been super stressful for me. I work in the baby room of a nursery, and there are three of us who work in that room. But this week the other two were both on annual leave. There is a policy that says only one person from a room is allowed annual leave at a time. And now I completely understand why.

Even though I had plenty of help in my room from other staff, it was super stressful for me because I was the only one who knew the children’s individual routines, like who needed morning naps, who needs bottles at what times, or any dietary requirements. So a lot of the basic running of the room and care of the children was dependent on me.

It was also stressful because my room leader had asked me to do a couple of tasks and activities with the children by the end of the week. She wanted me to do some valentine’s craft activities with all of the children so that they could take them home on Friday. But I felt like I didn’t have enough time, especially as the room was basically in chaos because the colleagues who were helping in the room didn’t know the routines and things.

So I’m a bit annoyed that she didn’t try to start these craft activities earlier so that they were completely done before she went away. But for the most part the activity got done, although it wasn’t ready to go home on Friday. I don’t think it’s a big deal. They can just be handed out on Monday I guess.

Now I’m very much grateful that it’s the weekend. It is also the first weekend I’ve had for about a month where I didn’t have any commitments. So I’m really pleased about that. I can’t believe it’s already Sunday, but at least the coming week will be more relaxed with both my colleagues back in the room.

Anyway, I know this was a bit of a ranting post, but I kind of needed to get that feeling off my chest. Hopefully my next post will be a bit more cheerful. Lol.

Love Bobbi. Xx.