Thank you for your support Anita. I am somewhat more level headed now. I think I need to get out of my victim mindset and be responsible for my next actions and stop moping. I have been reading a little about philosophy (something I barely grasp but have a passing interest in) and stumbled across the quote ‘The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem’.

Its easy for me to be pissed off with my current job as it is dull and the boss is really not nice and inspite of being there almost 2 years I still don’t really fit in or feel comfortable with people. But… I am jealous of my friend for getting so lucky (and a part of me absolutely hates and resents him because he doesn’t even REALISE it and is just smug), but my other friend who worked in video games with me originally and has over 10 years experience in it is jealous of me because although his job pays more he is in recruitment and hates it and he wishes his job was as laid back and low pressure as mine is. Whereas I am jealous of his salary and the impact he has on peoples lives. My partner is jealous of me too as she works for sports direct and they are on the news for how poor their working conditions are.

So linking back to my quote, life isn’t fair but the problem isn’t that its unfair its that I expect it to be and it isn’t. I still don’t know how you are supposed to get over jealousy in general when it comes to serious injustice but for now this is helping me with my emotions. I don’t think I will ever be real friends with my old friend from university as his personality just makes me so angry at the drop of a hat and it will take me getting on my feet and feeling successful to get over that. I feel inferior to him because he has everything I want even excluding the job itself he still has cash stability and so on (he even just announced his honeymoon destination with his now wife which is where I want to take my fiance but can’t afford it).

As for now I still need to get on my feet but first I need to stop thinking like I am a wounded animal. I certainly feel trapped but there must be a way out of this as I am nowhere near helpless an people far worse off than me have climbed far higher than I need to.

Thanks
Ben

I need to find myself outside of art

Thanks for the responses guys.

The only message I can get from this feeling is that I need a new goal or ambition. I aimed at my previous goal for a long time when I was growing up so an awful lot of my identity was invested in it. Losing it meant losing myself. It was how I distinguished myself, I may not be popular or have the most friends or have a car e.t.c but I was the best I knew at my art, it was my thing. Not only have I lost my ambition but I have lost my taste for art all together. But there is nothing in its place, no ambitions or goals, no real interests in anything. All jobs I see look dreadfully dull and the few that I have a chance at getting with my CV are low paid (all except my current role which is ok but not anything I want to stay doing). My current role was supposed to be temporary but as so often happens to other people I sort of stayed as there isn’t anything else for me. Its been a year and a half now and it just hit me that soon I will have been here as long as I was in games which is depressing considering there is nothing here for me besides a wage.

I know I need a new goal or passion but nothing really gets me going. I am looking at web design/development as it seems like the closest fit for me but I would be lying if I said I saw learning it anything more than a chore (usually). And unfortunately most blog posts regarding redundancy recommend getting training or education but surely when you are redundant is one time you certainly can’t afford this king of thing, I know I can’t. My options are severely limited.

I feel like I have nothing to be proud of, no achievements and no aspirations. I know I am ambitious and hard working but I have nowhere to aim at right now and at my current job I am wasting away being lazy and bored all the time. I very much wish I could click a button and get a new desire I feel passionate about.

Nina, I am satisfied with my partner, we are getting married next year and are currently planning our wedding. But outside of that I am afraid no I am not satisfied with anything really. While I recognise it could be a whole lot worse I also see that not only is it not what I wanted and worked to build it is also balanced on a knife edge and I see that were I made redundant again I could lose everything. Part of me wants to go for jobs that have good money but the passionate part of me (and the part that gets bored very easily) doesn’t want something soulless but I just do not know how to reconcile the two parts.

Thanks
Ben

Thanks for your response Anita. I am in a much better head space today, for some reason I was very moody yesterday. I get what you are saying though my point still stands. All of those examples make sense and my answer to my own original question to them is you can’t compare youreself to others as situations are different.

However the more similarities between two people in the past the more opportunity there is for jealousy to develop. My friend and I were very similar and almost due to a coin flip he now has everything I wanted. Specifically a job he loves that is stable and challenging with chances of progression. He gets to tell people hes worked on final fantasy XV and Battlefield 3 and call fo duty and people are genuinely interested and he works with likeminded people. I on the other hand am bored most days and have a dull lifeles job with no progression and way too much workplace drama for my taste. And I am simply not qualified to do anything else nor is there anything I wanted and even if I did you need so many qualifications these days I simply cannot afford education.

We were once so similar but now he has spent 5 years or more becoming even more capable in his field and I have had to struggle to keep my head above ground. I could argue that due to luck (though not luck alone, I am not saying he isn’t skilled just that by comparison to myself we had the same chance and he got lucky) he got his chance and it worked out but that doesn’t mean hes any better than me but 5 years of professional work on AAA projects makes him unstoppable and certainly better than me now. He could get a job at most studios (and gets headhunted occasionally) and I couldn’t even get a junior role now. He has a better life than me, it’s that simple. His future has more prospects than mine by far and he is living his dream. I am sure he has other ideas but when he sees me on facebook I’m sure he has no interest in connecting and doesn’t feel much other than pity whereas I am consumed by envy when I see him.

How do I get over this? The facts are quite irrifutable his lot is better than mine. If I had another ambission I could move on but I simply don’t and not for lack of looking. I am not jealous of other peoples success I am jealous of this one guy because had a couple of things gone differently that could have been me.

I don’t focus on this day to day, just that when the mood strikes I get very emotional over it. I feel like I have been dropped on the heap, like my best times are behind me and now I have 30+ years of dead end drudgery ahead. It’s not event hat I begrudge him his life, just that what he has highlights what I don’t have and knowing how easily it could have been me it just eats me up inside.

It sounds silly to say but it’s like I have this weight that I drag around with me that if I could shrug it off I could move onwards towards a better future. But at the same time holding onto this weight is what is keeping me from finding a new future.

I may start a new thread on this actually as after writing this I think perhaps I need to let go of my past, maybe this is the weight I feel not neccessarily jealousy. I feel like a part of me is dead and perhaps my jealousy is that my friends dream is still alive but mine is dead. Maybe. I think the big thing that makes this worse is that not only was I made redundant, there are no jobs in my field anywhere close so I am mixing redundancy with a career change. Not to mention that I have no desires to do anything anymore, so when I should be working hard to change things I can’t even decide on a direction and at times I don’t even want to get out of bed.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by Ben.

Well that went badly. I called my sister and she told me she didn’t want to be bridesmaid anyway and stuff then hung up. Then called me back minutes later saying that my fiancee has hurt her feelings and that she did want to be a bridesmaid really and stuff. It escalated into my fiancée hating all my family including her and that they all think my fiancée is a snob and ignorant. She topped it off by saying she was done with me and that was that. She basically said she disowns me.

She also says she hates that I asked her to do a reading for me too and that she wont be at the wedding now.

I broke down for a while then called my mother who although she does appreciate my situation still maintains that my fiancee should have asked my sister to begin with. And she says that she should still ask her and stuff. Even when she spoke to my fiancée (who was also in tears now) she still maintained this stance.

I am right in the middle here as I agree with both parties. But I was not asked to be a groomsman at my sisters wedding and didn’t expect to be and neither do I expect to be a groomsman at her next wedding (if she remarries). It never occurred to me that this would be such a big deal. But on the other hand I also think my fiancee could have done with being more considerate with my families feelings (granted so could I).

My sister then texted me with a nasty text and did the same with my fiancée. She’s always had a temper but this really surprised me.

So now we dont know what to do.

Hi! Just a quick update:
I got my new blood pressure tests done a few days ago, 127/82 which is well in the normal/healthy range. I am no longer at risk. I got it down from 142/95 which is a big change.

I also finished my html course and am now working on CSS so going well so far!

Thanks
Ben

Hi guys. I have an update on this and need to clarify some points. This will be a bit disjointed but I will try to cover everything. Thank you for your responses.

Firstly my dad is unemployed by choice. Without getting into too much detail my mother is 80% disabled but was capable but in her youth laws changed and she was let go by her company for ridiculous reasons I wont go into. She was encouraged to claim benefits and has been there since. My dad claimed that she needed his support daily as a carer thus he left work and didn’t go back. He is very skilled tradesman without official qualifications , basically one of those guys who can do anything they set their mind to yet he wont work. He would rather sit on his arse for £10 then work for £1000. It goes a lot deeper than this but this is my shame. Compared to my partners family who even after retirement still work part time jobs.

My partner and my sister actually do get along, but my family just do not do anything so there has never been a convenient ‘neutral ground’ for them to meet and my family would not go to my partners house to meet neither would they be comfortable having my partners family over. In fact until I met my partner I had never eaten at a restaurant and my parents had never had friends over to visit so it was so hard to get them to meet and I wasn’t so enthusiastic to begin with. My sister works all the time all over the country so shes never available to meet and is unreliable at the best of times. She only calls when she needs something and is notorious for borrowing money and never paying it back. She currently owes me £800 and owes other members of my family thousands. Shes a nice person and has a heart of gold and was great to me growing up but she just has bad luck and is unreliable.

My partner knows all of this except she didn’t ever see how good she was to me when I was young so all she has to go on is the negative stuff. She is also reluctant to include my sister as a bridesmaid as she doesn’t want to trust her to do anything in the chance she won’t do it. I get why my partner doesn’t want her as a bridesmaid because she just doesn’t know her.

I do not mind if my family doesnt like theirs and so on. To be honest their family has adopted me as one of their own and given me a lot over the years. My family on the other hand (due mainly to my dads unemployment) didn’t have the money to equally contribute to my partner the way her family did to me and my parents are so emotionally crippled they made my partner feel awkward when they met. When we bought the house my fiancees father helped with almost all of it himself or put us in touch with tradesmen when he couldnt do it. They paid for loads of things and really did everything they could to help. My family are feeling insecure right now because they realise that they haven’t done nearly as much for me and my faincee as her family has and they feel like they have been shunted out to one side, but the truth is they did it themselves by not supporting us. I get they simply cant afford to financially support us but they could have put some effort in at least but nothing has come.

My dad on the other hand skilled as he is didn’t even come down to do anything, even though he said he would he just didn’t turn up and offered no explanation.I lost a lot of respect and seeing as I talked him up to my fiancees family him not showing just embarrassed me. Now when it comes to the wedding my faincees family are intending to pay a fair bit of that too so its no surprise my partner gets more influence over the proceedings (not that she excludes me, just that she has a direct line to the accountants:)).

I get why my parents want to push my sister as bridesmaid as I think its more a matter of pride and respect for them in this small thing but at the same time I get why my partner doesn’t want her. She does want her there as a guest certainly just not as one of her bridal party and it is of course her choice after all.

So this leads me to the current situation.

I brought this up with my fiancee, she was very upset and cried a lot thinking my family hates her. She still kept her point though she doesn’t know my sister and doesn’t feel comfortable including her in the bridal party as she is pretty much a stranger. We argued for a while but in the end she suggested that perhaps my sister could do a reading at the wedding for us, or at the reception. I have not told my family about this yet though.

I really hate being in the middle of all this. It makes me regret proposing.

Thanks for your support.

Hi!
Still on a roller coaster of emotions (granted its only been a few days) but I’ve been thinking about stuff and still think I made the right choice in stepping away from 3D art and video games. I feel quite positive right now. I have been looking into things that I gave up for digital art, namely my motorcycle test (which should be soon) and training brazilian Jujitsu. All things that I put off or gave up to make time for art.

I couldn’t help but panic about the future Anita, I tried just relaxing but I have too much free time! I’ve decided that if I can’t have the dream job I wanted then I will try and work towards something that has good pay at least and maybe something I can do without needing extra tuition. As it turns out there is quite a demand in my area for web developers and designers and even better you can learn it at least to a base proficiency without proper tuition. It also gives me avenues to still use my art abilities too if I go the designer route. And whats more learning to code has been on my to do list for a few years I just never got round to it.

I’m not setting goals or anything but it cheers me up no end to at least have an idea of what direction to take my life and it gives me something to learn too. I am not forcing myself to study like I did with art, just going to give it an hour here and there until I decide if I have a taste for it or not.

So feeling quite positive right now. Still up and down but I am keeping everything relaxed as much as possible and its sort of working. I am going to the doctors soon though as I think due to stress I have a rushing sound in my left ear which has been here for 2 weeks. Finally had enough of it!

I will keep posting on here as it helps to record my thoughts now and then. Thanks for al your support I really appreciate it.

After thinking on this a bit I believe it is mainly down to accountability. The project manager could really be anyone, they just agree to oversee the project and take the blame if anything goes wrong. They don’t necessarily need low level knowledge of the subject matter (though it would help a bunch I imagine) they need to be able to organise people and track progress as well as think fast and put out fires where necessary. They need someone with authority and responsibility so perhaps this is paid so well as getting someone willing to make decisions and be accountable for them especially when large sums of cash are on the line is a big deal.

On the other and should educated or trained grunt workers be paid as little as they are?…hell no. But I do think they are their own worst enemy when it comes to pay. In the more appealing fields it is common for highly skilled and talented workers to work for less and less just because if they don’t someone else will due to massive amounts of competition for jobs. Similarly why grad schemes and volunteer work is bad for industries as it devalues the trade. Why hire a professional when you can hire a grad straight out of uni work them like a dog for a year then swap them out when they are burned out for another batch of fresh grads.

It also doesn’t help that a lot of trade workers study their field due to passion and personal interest thus will work for less because they enjoy or want a job they enjoy. Mainly in art fields in my experience but no doubt occurs elsewhere.

There is also a big issue in the west with companies outsourcing the actual work on projects to eastern countries who can afford to work for much less due to numerous reasons. This means there is a ton of workers in the west who cannot get a foot on the ladder as there are so few jobs. A western company can hire one skilled worker and then have them manage a team of eastern contractors and just set the quality bar and monitor standards. When the project is done they simply end the contract with the outsourcing company and all they have to do is have the one worker on the payroll.

This has created a complete gap in the jobs market because graduates cannot get on the ladder to begin their journey to n years experience and why a lot of employers say they cannot find experienced skilled workers in their fields (on the rare occasion they need one).

This is obviously my opinion the economics of all this goes way over my head but this is what I believe.