You are more than just how many hours you work.

[invader_gvim]

HI GUYZ

I spent the last week in a deep depression thinking about where my life was and how it didn't really meet my financial and social expectations of where a woman is supposed to be by the age I am at. So there I was, laying on my couch and ranting to my husband about how much of a disappointment I felt that I was. He had some words for me that really pulled me out of it, and I feel like I have a duty to share it with as many people as possible in case any of you are going through the same thing.

Ahem. Anyway...

You don't exist just to work. You exist to actually experience life and the things it has to offer. Just because you don't make as much money as you feel like you should does not make you a less valuable human being. You aren't lazy, but even if you were it is okay to be lazy. You have all kinds of people putting pressure on you to work harder, try harder, and sometimes it makes sense that you'd explode under the pressure and fail. That doesn't make you a failure.

Picture a person who is great at their job and has money. That is definitely a positive. At the same time that does not automatically make that person a success. What makes them a good or bad person is how they treat the people close to them - their friends. As long as you have those people it doesn't matter if you live under a bridge. You are not a failure.

We humans are social animals and so the relationships we have with the people we love are a way better metric of how we are doing than the amount of dollars we own. All of this time I have thought that I wasted my life on not achieving as much as I humanly could, when really I was wasting it piling stress upon stress onto it.

Its okay to take time and just relax. You are loved, and if you aren't then you need to find people that love you. You need to find meaning in life and the meaning that comes from having a good job and working 80 hours a week is not good. I used to work at a coal mine and I had all kinds of money for someone in my poor area. Let me tell you it wasn't worth it. I wish I could get all those hours of overtime back so I could spend them with my husband, my other friends, and even just my computer writing and programming.

My husband didn't touch on this, but another source of meaning you can tap into is art. This meaning isn't just a for fun thing that you do when you aren't working. DDo not forget that you work to live not live to work. You are not Mr. Meeseeks.



You are a blade of grass in a beautiful field, just growing along with those that are close to you.

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Who in their right mind could disagree? 
Congratulations for beating your crisis!

I'd like to add that any comparison ("A person in my age should have...") is futile anyway: Every life's journey is vastly different, and many crucial aspects aren't under your control. For me, the crucial most important thing is to stay true to my own ideals - which is, in result, not vastly different from what you are saying ("treating close people good").

[TheFrugalGamer]

Thank you so much for sharing this; so many people need to hear it! The drive to "become your work" is just an exploitative attitude that serves someone else other than you, and there are so many other ways to find meaning in your life that can be enriching for you and others. For me, having a kid was what forced me to re-align my priorities, but for others it's an illness, or the loss of a loved one, and I wish it were easier for us to find that before something serious happens. Then again, maybe that's part of growing up; I dunno.

I'd like to add to your point about finding meaning in art: don't worry if it's not "good enough!" Everyone starts somewhere, and your art doesn't have to look like someone else's in order to be worth looking at or making. Sometimes the most important part is the making itself, not the end product.

@ThunderPerfectWitchcraft that's a great point about making comparisons, and the wisdom I've always seen people share as they get older in life is that comparing yourself to others is always bound to bring misery. I think that's why so many people find social media so harmful, because it's primarily geared towards encouraging that comparison with the curated side of other people that they let us see.