The Dirt Field

I have a completely awesome job. My company is very small, my two bosses are exceptionally cool, I work from home all the time, I wear jeans on the days I manage to make it into the office, I work completely independently, my paycheck is sufficient, I have my own office, and I have a company cellphone that can practically brew me a cappuccino. And yet, I’m miserable. The actual work I do is so tedious, so irritating, and so incredibly detail-oriented that I want to duct tape my body to the interstate to make certain that when cars run me over, I am not dislodged from the paths of other oncoming cars.

The work I do involves helping other companies prepare proposals for a particular type of government contract. I’d explain it in more detail, but then you’d die of boredom and there would be one less person to listen to my complaining. Suffice to say that the government is very picky and very fussy and very needy, and they make it a specific point to find people who personify those qualities to review proposals. That obnoxious girl with braces and glasses who was the hall monitor in sixth grade and who told on you when you ran in the hallway? Yeah, she reviews proposals for the government now. That unwashed, weaselly boy in high school who asked dozens of questions to clarify every assignment in your English class? He works there too.

These requirements, and the constant stress that accompanies trying to learn, interpret, and remember them, have turned me into an angry, snappy individual who cracks open her first beer of the day at 10am when she works from home. The worst part is that the government also makes it a point to constantly update their proposal requirements, so just as I am finally catching on, the rules change. One reviewer enthusiastically told me last week that they were just about to release a new version of those requirements, to which I mournfully replied, “A little part of me dies every time I hear those words.” And I totally meant it. Pretty soon, I’m going to be an empty husk of a person, slouched over and with my bony fingers gripping my mouse and my vacant eyes rolling out of my head and onto the desk. Right next to my dozens of empty beer bottles.

I know it is just a job and I can always find another, but something about this particular work has literally sapped me of my will to do anything. Well, except whine. I do keep up with my whining quite regularly. It has gotten to the point where I consider showing up naked to work, or walking out in the middle of the day, or telling my clients to please just go tell somebody who cares. If I were to get fired, then the choice of staying or going would be made for me, and it would also give me an opportunity to do what I do best: eating and wearing the same outfit over and over and over again. Not that I don’t do that already, but being unemployed would relieve me of the annoying need to shower in between putting the same outfit back on, and also of the need to leave the house EVER.

But the reasons I stay at my job now are pretty compelling. First of all, I find money to be somewhat of an asset, and as I have learned in the past, if you are not working, you are not earning money. Well, either that you’re Paris Hilton, but that’s another situation entirely. My financial situation is really starting to improve, and somehow I am under the impression that ceasing to have income would alter that radically. Secondly, I have some great perks here – I work from home all the time, which is great because it means I have all sorts of chances to stop and say, “I’m getting paid to do this!” Like when I’m naked and drinking and chasing the dog around while singing songs from The Sound Of Music. I don’t think I’ll find many other jobs at this point that would trust me to work at home. I WONDER WHY.

And finally, I actually feel some loyalty to my company. I know, I know. Like my father said, if I died tomorrow, they’d just hire someone else anyway. But I’m not dead yet, and with a company of fewer than ten people, my departure would be temporarily crippling. When you consider that I actually like my bosses, it makes it difficult to imagine leaving. Unless that leaving occurs when I leap headfirst out my fifth-story window, something the architects of this building thoughtfully decided to prevent by embedding wire mesh into the glass.

The problem is that while I am treading water and trying to figure out what to do next, this current situation is literally sucking the life out of me. It sounds so pathetically overdramatic, but the stress has made it so that I no longer have the desire to do things like write on the blog, undertake art projects, or watch Grey’s Anatomy when it airs. I KNOW. I can’t believe I just wrote that either. It’s like admitting that I am a leper. But it’s true, and that worries me a little.

I know what needs to be done, but the longer I feel like shit, the less I feel capable of doing anything about it. Since I dropped out of law school, I have done nothing but flirt with career ideas and flounder from plan to plan, and I have no idea of how to get started anymore. My biggest fear is that I will look around in ten years and STILL BE IN GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS. I think I’d rather look around in ten years and surrounded by syphilis.

Help. Please.