[hamster-bamster]

I have to continue with my employment because it pays the bills but I hate it because it is completely meaningless. I have never had such a meaningless job before. I used to be passionate about what I did. Today I am mostly copy-pasting from one spreadsheet to another. The spreadsheets contain my comments about the queue of tickets. Tickets are used to order hardware - servers and filers. Service engineers need hardware, they or we order it, its gets shipped from a factory to a datacenter, unloaded and hooked up at data centers, and then software is installed onto the hardware from California.

The data centers are located in Nebraska and other middle-of-nowhere places where I have never been.

I need to keep my comments in the spreadsheets current, but some tickets have not been acted upon by the technicians in data centers so ALL I do is go into the comment, change the date on it from 1/16 to 1/18, submit the comment, copy it, and paste into the appropriate spreadsheet. Hard to be motivated.

But I have to. I cannot stop.

Not asking for advice, just sharing my frustration.

Not all days are so meaningless but today has been especially bad. But no good days.

[MudCrab]

Hello, hamster-bamster. Are there opportunities for advancement at your current place of employ? Is a different job a consideration?

[hamster-bamster]

Good question. Right on. I am a contractor, so, currently, none. But, if I do well, there is a good chance of being what is called "converted" into a permanent employee after my contract expires in June. Then, as a permanent employee, I would eventually be able to ask to be transferred to another department to do something else. So in the long run, yes.

[Victoria'smom]

What things are you passionate about? Can you start looking for a more meaningful career? How long are you confined to your area?

[hamster-bamster]

This is going to be long to answer, MM...

I know this seems minor... and I should be thankful for having a source of income and not being suicidal, but I cannot even find motivation to log off this site and deal with my work email.

Over the past few days my lawyer Robert and I have been exchanging edits to my declaration that would accompany the motion to get reunification therapy for my daughters and me.

What has been my main feeling while doing it?

ENVY!!!

I envy him.

Because what has he done? He met with me and heard me speak. He looked through the records. He read emails. Etc. etc. Basically he collected a lot of information. And then he drafted a long text, making arguments and weaving a story while referencing law.

Why, I want to do that! I can draft texts no problem - I like it, look at my post count!

Instead, I have a long queue of what is called "tickets" at work. Each ticket is to order hardware - servers or filers. Huge computers. I have never seen a server or filer. I do not know what they look like. I do not know their distinction. They are all shipped from factories to data centers and assembled there. Datacenters are in the middle of nowhere and we have daily calls with them. I have never been to them.

I then have to wrap my head around gigs of memory, switches, VLAN's and other networking terms, and other things that have absolutely no meaning to me. Just none whatsoever.

It is so incredibly boring.

Then I write comments on the "tickets" and copy them and paste them in a shared spreadsheet. Lines and lines of comments, every day.

Then when the ticket completes, I run a UNIX audit script on it to determine if it was completed correctly and when not, file repair tickets. Then each day I monitor my queue of repair tickets and rerun the audit script. Finally, when all is good with a ticket, I "hand off" it via a bug. And transfer to another sheet in the shared spreadsheet that tracks completed tickets.

I have a counterpart doing the same work. She was hired together with me in June and her contract ends in June, like mine.

She used to work at a Microsoft datacenter so she can actually relate to the work.

Our former supervisor has recently been promoted and been given the responsibilities of another guy who, in turn, has been promoted and given more executive responsibilities.

My counterpart and I were given the responsibilities of our former supervisor, to split between us, and I see her working very eagerly and even sending emails from home at 3AM. This is because these new responsibilities, the new meetings that came with them, etc. etc. increase our exposure and consequently the chances of being converted to permanent employees. She clearly wants it very much.

I now attend calls every morning during which those tickets are discussed with the managers of various data centers. All company-wide tickets are being discussed and only perhaps 5-10% of them and not even in each meeting relate to our team. But I still have to sit through the meetings.

I can see that I would not be able to handle work that is so boring and so absolutely meaningless to me for long. So I try to convince myself to put in effort to perform well and get converted and - since it is a large company - once a permanent employee, look for a transfer to a more interesting department.

While I worked in technology companies before, for many years, I never had this sort of work. The work was interesting and much more verbal. I was able to feel passionate about it. I also understood all the intricacies of it and was an expert, which turns out to be pretty important. Here I am talking with those data center managers about stuff that I do not understand, would never understand, and have no interest in whatsoever.

So I do not even berate myself when I see my post count on here go up. I understand why it is happening - I want to engage in something meaningful. Daily copy-pasting is not meaningful.

In 2009 I had IQ testing done. The results were unusual. The verbal IQ was in the 95th percentile and the neuropsychologist said that this figure was an underestimate because I took the test in a non-native language. I do not remember the non-verbal IQ now but it was not impressive. In fact, it was so much lower than the verbal IQ that only 3% of the population have this kind of spread between the two.

So what am I doing with computers with this sort of unimpressive non-verbal IQ??

I do not use my good big monitor at work because I cannot connect my MAC to it. So I just use the MAC as a laptop and do not care. It is ridiculous that being unable to deal even with that I am doing what I am doing at work. All those "boxes" as they call the big computers in data centers and all that complex, intricate wiring between them. And I cannot deal with a single laptop-monitor connection.

So at present I am ready to go to law school. I can deal with the workload and process large amounts of information, and deal with being the oldest student fine.

But I do not have the right to choose. I need to work/make money to pay support. Only if I cannot find work I can go to school, as my lawyer advised.

Also, while I can see myself being fine as a student, I am not sure about the working hours of an actual lawyer. Sure it would be nice to have a three year break while using student loans, but then comes a point of paying them off. Would I be able to handle the workload? I need a lot of sleep, more than most people.

[hamster-bamster]

I also did work for tech companies that was not very technical but analytical with a big writing component so that is another option - it is just hard to find.

[unaluna]

Read the nytimes, there is a glut of lawyers and law schools and law school graduates who cannot find a job in their field after graduation. In IT, I have often felt like a monkey could do my job. I would just try to do a good job where you are. Why make things more difficult for yourself? You have a lot of irons in the fire at this point. Why not find out what kind of continuing education might help you? Some places were only hiring people with Masters degrees when I left the workforce.

[hamster-bamster]

I understand usability and human computer interaction in general, the human part being key, but to get a masters in HCI I would need to quit working and I must work. I do not know how people combine full time work with evening classes. Probably because I need so much sleep. Most people do well on much fewer hours of sleep. And it is not drugs. Well, Lithium is a tiny bit sedating. But no, it is just something that has happened to me with age. Need my sleep.

So a monkey could do your work? This is how I feel.

With unemployed law school graduates, most do not have industry experience and I would have ten years, including in something as hot as data privacy (a perfect job prior to the suicide attempt). So, some positives on my side as well.

Complained to G about it yesterday and he thinks the job occupies too much room in my life hence I pay so much attention. If I add a diverse range of activities from reading books to volunteering, I would feel more fulfilled.

Complained to pdoc and he suggested online writing in turn, where people take turns writing the plot of a story. I have never heard of it.

I am just so mad at myself because the suicide attempt exactly four years ago and themedical leave that followed ended a perfect career and data privacy was something I was passionate about.

[Victoria'smom]

Online writing or article writing may be an option. I know it'll take much longer but have you thought about taking one class at a Time and slowly increasing to what you can handle? Or an online options so you can do it on weekends? There's also writing clubs. I'll add co-op writing sites later.

[hamster-bamster]

Oh, so co-op writing is the name of this activity?

I will also think about taking one class at a time.

[purpledaisy]

I truly believe that if everyone took the time to discover their true passion and made that their great work, their big mission, their purpose in life, the world we be a better place and each person would work toward fulfillment rather than feeling lost or working in jobs they hate.

The big problem is most people let life happen to them. They have no idea where they are headed and jobs just come along. Jobs. Not careers. Big difference.

I'm not saying you are one of those people, Hamster. I'm just saying that it seems this way in general.

Take the time to find out what job makes you happy. Think back to when you were a little girl. What did you want to be when you grew up? What did you enjoy back then?

If most of us took the time to follow our little girl dreams and adapt them into something that can be useful, we would be happier and make the world a better place.

Life is too short to go to a job you hate each day.

[hamster-bamster]

When I was three years old, I wanted to be a taxi driver!