So, I just switched positions within the same dept. recently. I am now considered an admin. asst./receptionist. I hate it. No, really. I'm a month in & I absolutely loathe it. This is bad. My art show is coming up in October & this job is zapping me. I have to stare at spreadsheets all day & when I get home I can't focus my eyes anymore for my art work. In fact, it's hard to focus at all on anything. I absolutely despise Excel. How on earth do people do it? How do they enter data constantly. It makes me uptight, tense, moody & gives me headaches. The fact that it is messing with my ability to focus when I get home is really getting me down.
I have no idea what to do.
I am not going to want to be here much longer. I'll be lucky to make it a year. I know, I probably sound whiny & spoiled, & I should be happy to have a job, but I'm not happy. The benefits are nice, but this job is not for me. It is not helping me reach my goals.
Again, I have no idea what to do.
All I know right now is that I better figure something out or this is going to end badly. The old job wasn't any better. It was for a while, but it got bad too. The constant negativity & put downs where bad for my self esteem. Now the esteem is good but the health & creativity are being drained away.
This sucks.
Jobs like that are always going to be unsatisfying because it's still mindless factory work.
ReplyDeleteIf you're not where you intend to be for any length of time, you owe it to yourself to talk to your boss about what you can do to get to a better place. It's a good manager's responsibility to help grow their employees to succeed. If you have any idea where you DO want to be, go talk to those people, too. Make your intentions known and ask what you need to do to get there. It's your responsibility to get you to where you want to be - no one else is going to magically put you there.
ReplyDeleteI maintain a philosophy that I work to live and not the other way around. What I do is a means to support what I enjoy doing. This helps me, but might not be your cup of tea.
While you're stuck where you are, have you considered bringing a little bit of "you" into the crap tasks? There's gotta be a color theme you can adopt for excel that will at least help take your mind off the menial (Yoda green balanced with Dune Sea sand? And yes - I totally wikipedia-ed that). What if you think of excel as being akin to creating the death star (which was probably also created systematically)? Or go all out and do your data entry while painting with your feet under your desk? Not THAT would be some fun multi-tasking!