Poll of the Day > Three years ago today, I got hired at my first job.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I make about fifty-percent more today, than I did when I initially began. Today, I had to ask my boss a question about my wages for a rental application I was working on. I had to ask him if my compensation will change in the next twelve months. He replied that, "It is definitely not going to decrease." I am no master of social etiquette, so I have no idea if asking him was appropriate or not. But he definitely did not point it out. In any case, I figured out what to write in my application, but I also lost my nerve and got me very agitated. Then it had me thinking about me working here.

My hourly wage is fairly modest. Part of my job involves checking the profiles for information regarding the clients who use the company services. It very much saddens me every once in a while to read that some homeless bloke or woman makes more money than I do, and I am starting to realize that I'm some new breed of idiot to not recognize this as an alarm to go look for work elsewhere. It was only today, when my boss told me that my wage was not going to increase in the next year (or at least had no guarantee of increasing), that I realized this. I still don't know what I want to do.

Less than a month ago, I asked some other forum for help on how to decide upon a possible career. I was instructed to spend thirty or so minutes per day to answer a set of questions that would make my career prospects seem clearer. There were many things that became clear to me, namely:

(1) Mental illness inhibits my ability to work competently.
(2) Almost every one of my hobbies is a form of escapism and only a handful of these can be a potential career or hobby.
(3) I have only a handful of useful skills.
(4) I don't have a preference for what kind of job I do as long as it pays me enough to afford reasonably priced rent and living expenses.

These recurring themes came up in the answers to the following questions:

(1) "What are your weaknesses?"
(2) "What do you like to do? Is it a potential hobby, career, or neither?"
(3) "What are your strengths?"
(4) "Which would you prefer: an interesting job or money? Location or money? Ethics or money?"

I should note that it's been two months since I had the ability to take time off and go interview and I haven't been looking. I've been justifying this for the reason that I don't even know what kind of career I want, and that I would be wasting my time doing something else that won't contribute to my career. I'm thinking I'm wasting my time here, already. The only thing that this job has going for it is the stability, which I'm afraid of losing. Additionally, if I come across some job posting, I ask myself how to convince them in an interview why I want to work for them. Then I ask myself how to convince myself whether or not I want to work for them. Then I stop looking at their posting. What I really want the most is to move out of the state, but I've been advised against it by my psychologist. Since graduation, I've been trying to get into the habit of following her advice because I realize that what should probably be my first concern above anything else, is to be cured of any mental abnormalities--or any that can be cured, in any case. It's the one thing that keeps me enjoying life, concentrating, and as I have noted earlier, being a good worker. Although, I am not too sure why my current company keeps me still if that last bit were true.

I don't know what my point here was, honestly. I just suddenly felt lost career-wise today, after being told about my wage. Just wondering what I'm doing with my life--and now I have an answer ready: wasting it, that's what. I'm sorry if my thoughts sound disjointed and random in this post, by the way. My mood's probably affecting my concentration. Maybe it's due to something else. Maybe I just feel like typing out random thoughts that have been running through my mind for the past five months or so. I don't know, really.
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I don't know what's wrong with me.
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Just be a man