Quote:
Originally Posted by CosmicRose
I know this is really childish. I am really jealous of people who are rich, who have trust funds, who are famous, or who otherwise never have to work.
I wake up tossing and turning or in a sweat some nights because of the anxiety I feel about working every day for the next 45 years. It's gotten increasingly bad at night, where I'm waking up about 4 times throughout the night just thinking about work or college or coworkers or customers or money.
I had a conversation with someone a few days ago who said "Haha I will never have to work, my dad owns 3 factories and when he passes away I will inherit them. He will probably just give me an easy position with a great salary until that time comes anyway."
I came across a website that listed a celebrity's net worth of 140 million dollars.
I have a friend who is a trust fund baby living in Santa Monica in a mansion.
I know someone close to me who never has to work a day in her life because she won the jackpot, literally.
All these things are just huge reminders that I'll be slaving away in a job for years to come and they won't have to.
I don't know how to just get over this. I want to strike gold or something but I know that's unrealistic. I just have so much anxiety, more so than the average person it seems like, and its almost crippling.
I often imagine how much easier my life would be if I were sitting on a couple million and that life is so drastically different than the life I'm living now.
How can I get over this and stop being so jealous, or wishing for other people's success?
I come from generations of working class family members. My dad was an electrician and my mom was an office manager. They both worked hard jobs their entire lives from being a cashier at a grocery store, to being a bank teller, to a busser, to a secretary until they landed higher paying careers. The thought of just trying to survive paycheck to paycheck really scares me. Or not knowing where life will take me as far as jobs are concerned...or not knowing what I really want to do.
My grandma was a waitress for her entire life. My grandpa was a mechanic. My aunt is a teacher. My uncle is a truck driver. My boyfriend is a cop. I have no idea what I want to do and this keeps me up at night. I'm also really shy and get intimidated by people easily.  |
I have moments like this from time to time. More often than I would like, I'm afraid. I feel ungrateful when I feel this way because the reality is, there are people tossing and turning and waking up in the middle of the night out there because they have no income and wonder where the money to purchase food for breakfast for their family will come from in the morning. I begin counting my blessings...
Still, I hear ya because sometimes even that doesn't work. I'm in my mid forties and I find myself envious of those that are closer to retirement than I am too as well as those who have never worked a day in their lives and will not ever have to do so. There are days (due to my anxiety) when I am at work that from the moment I arrive until I leave, I am wired, on edge and feel like I want to throw up. Those days are rough because I want to be anywhere but there doing anything but that but it's confusing too because I have no idea what I want to do instead. You know?
Inevitably though, the feelings pass. There are days when it's okay and I realize that another day is behind me and I got through and maybe even helped a few people along the way and it's not so bad. I detest feeling anxious at work, I mean you're there for 8 hours of your day and often times (for me anyway) the anxiety doesn't just shrivel up and go away as soon as I'm off work; it spills into the rest of my evening and then invades my sleep!
So, on those rough days when I wake up fitful from lack of sleep because of all my worrying, I just try and keep my head down and barrel through and pray A LOT! When the day is over, I literally look at it as survival and count that as one of my blessings too because I cannot help the way I feel about this, no matter whether people who are jobless out there have it worse than me or not. You know?