She Works All Week and Spends Her Weekends Recovering — At 26 She’s Already Wondering How Long She Can Keep Living This Way
Pexels/Reddit
Work can take over your life even when the schedule looks normal on paper.
One cashier feels that way after spending most weekdays working, commuting, and recovering from the stress.
By the time she gets home, she has little energy left for friends or the hobbies she once enjoyed.
Even weekends now feel more like recovery time than a real break.
At only 26, she already feels isolated and exhausted by the thought of doing this for decades.
Read on to see why she’s starting to question her whole life.
I’m just so tired and burnt out
I work 8-hour days, have an hour lunch, and probably spend 30–60 minutes driving to and from work, depending on if I want to stop and do a quick errand before going home.
I doubt anyone’s up for 19 hours when they have a work day/night, so more than half of my day, when it’s a work day, is for the job!
I’m just mentally exhausted.
If you count my drive and lunch, it’s 9.5-hour workdays.
She has no motivation for anything else.
At work, I feel like an empty husk since I’m doing the same thing every day. I had a manager who wouldn’t listen to feedback I gave but yet kept adding new rules we had to follow (the “Because I said so” mentality, I guess). Plus, I work in customer service, and that itself is stressful. You never know what person will come in waiting for an excuse to fly off the handle.
I feel like there’s no time in the day to do what I want, and even on weekends I just feel like I’m recuperating from work. I try not to think about work and enjoy my days off when I have them, but I can’t seem to.
Today, for instance, I realized that even when I do enjoy those days off, they inevitably end and I’m back to the grind on Monday. Weekends are just me trying to recuperate and thus not do anything “fun.”
At this point, she just wants a normal life.
I want to participate in activities at my church, but work goes so late into the day compared to when they have the activities that they may have already been going on for so long by the time I’m done.
My coworkers are good people, but I can’t see us hanging out outside of work. I miss having time to be with my real friends like in college.
And I don’t know how to meet new people outside of those church activities. I’m surrounded by people constantly, but this is the most isolated I’ve felt in my 26 years alive. Also, apparently, as Americans, we only spend 45% of our workday actually being productive. So what’s the point of keeping 40-hour workweeks on life support?
I have passions. I like to draw and ride my bike in the neighborhood, but they don’t seem to be alive lately. It’s like I’m a hollow shell just surviving. I don’t want to do this for another 30 years or so. This really can’t be healthy, can it?
Yikes! This whole thing sounds like a lot for her to handle.
Let’s check out what the people over at Reddit have to say.
You should always stop and smell the flowers… unless you have allergies.
That sounds about right.
Sign up to get our BEST stories of the week straight to your inbox.
Many people would probably agree.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a man who is shocked to learn how little he has to do to keep his cushy remote job.
Here’s someone who feels the same way.
Nobody should spend five days recovering from work and the other two preparing to go back.
She clearly needs a change before this job drains whatever energy she has left.
A shorter commute or a different schedule could give her some of her life back.
The good news is that at 26, she has plenty of time to find something that doesn’t leave her feeling this miserable.
Enjoyed this story?
Sign up to get our BEST stories of the week straight to your inbox.
