Every time I think I'm getting better and more focused at choosing happiness lately, I seem to get derailed.
I had another breakdown about work last night to my partner (before a family party no less so I ended up puff-faced and bleary-eyed hugging it out with relations). And it's getting tiresome to her and it's getting worrying to me that the fear I've always had (that I'm too much for anyone to handle forever) might be true.
And I don't really think it's true. I know I'm worthwhile and loveable. But I also think that she is right, that finding happiness now needs to be the real focus of life. Not working for income to try to save for the future, and plan for retirement.
Except that I know that's not really true either.
Ensuring that we will be able to have money to suss out some kind of retirement lifestyle is important. The time will come when we will get old and not want to, or be able to, work at full-time jobs. Perhaps not even part-time jobs. Having a plan in place to have an income when that time comes is important.
So is having a place to live, that is not going to face ever-increasing rents or be at risk of a landlord deciding they no longer want renters.
A house and retirement savings. Those are the reasons that I stay in "business", stay in a job that causes me stress. Because I worry that stress is just how I function. That changing for a job that pays less, will cause me just as much stress, and will not provide me the extra income to set up savings for that one-day house or that one-day retirement.
Yet, to be honest, the thought of being able to afford property seems pretty near impossible. I don't know how to increase retirement savings and still save for property. And I certainly don't know how to save up the amount of money that it will take to get a mortgage. How old can you be before the banks cut you off, tell you they cannot give you a 20 year mortgage? Is 45 the cut-off age? 55? 35?
Most of the time I feel like I don't know what I'm up against. I feel like if I could just get a good plan in place then maybe I could relax. Seek out that happiness that everyone tells me I need to be seeking in the day-to-day, not in the someday-future. But those plans depend on a steady income, and a steady excess of income that provides savings. Which endlessly feels like I have to stay in these kinds of jobs.
But would this job, and those like it, not be so miserable if I felt less trapped? If I lessened the pressure I put on myself and saw a job as "the job I have right now" rather than "the job that I have to keep for the next 40 years if I ever hope to be able to leave it and have a place to lie my head for my golden years"? Clearly I'm putting a pressure and a panic on myself that other people do not feel.
I'm not sure how to stop. But I'm trying to get happy and focus on what I have now, be grateful. I feel like I've lost that ability, which is humiliating, to be honest.
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