Miss Grumpypants

What do you do when you love and hate your job at the same time? When on the one hand it's a beautiful gift to work in a sustainable, eco-business with wonderful people, on a magical little farm, on the other it's a time-guzzling hassle to get there  (3hrs total travel per day), and working in the kitchen is eating away at me. I know that I am sensitive to stress, and glancing at my mother and grandfather, I am genetically in-line/ highly susceptible to extreme emotional disorders, anxiety and depression. I've toyed with those syndromes myself but like to think I've done a better job at mastering them than said ancestors. I'm so much better at handling stress than I used to be, but it's still not easy and working a high-stress job like running a kitchen is probably not the best place for me to be. I love preparing food, and especially like sending plates out that I've adorned with a bit of love—it's a really beautiful job, I mean it—but I don't know if I have the stamina to handle it for a longer period of time. It's only halfway through the café's season and I'm already starting to burn out. What to do?

I have a very hard time accepting just any job. I like to do work that I believe in with as much of my moral fiber as possible. I don't want to hear any high-horse responses to that please, I admit there is a certain type of pride in that, but a type of pride that has nothing to do with money or the status of a high-position job, no, but I do take pride in working in areas that I believe in, the rest is kind of a waste of my time. I'm not going to work at something I don't believe in, just to survive. That sounds retarded to me. I'd rather just die...I would rather spend my whole life working as a volunteer in exchange for room and board than taking up shifts at McDonalds or whatnot, hopefully I can survive with that mentality, we'll see... Luckily I managed to (in a new country, might I add) find a job that I totally can stand behind, but what if that job isn't healthy for me? How much of my energy and health am I willing to sacrifice for a job that doesn't make me feel like a hypocrite? I highly doubt that with my embarrassing level of Swedish I'll have too many more dream jobs to choose from, but when I come home exhausted and depressed every evening, I think it's time to do some rerouting.

This idea is pretty scary. What skills do I even posses? I learn quickly and try my best wherever I am, but still... leaving the comfortable, internationally friendly, hippie home and stepping out into the big world of other work might be difficult. Maybe I should just go back to school and learn something properly. Oh here we go again, I can sense some insomnia come on. I hate that I'm asking myself the questions, "what are you going to do with your life?", or "what are you going to be?", or "when are you going to start being serious?" Though I definitely want to grow and expand myself, I find it very hard to settle upon one thing, do it until I've become good at it, reached "success" and then retire and die. Oh my god, that sounds like the worst idea ever. I'm getting panicky just typing those words. I want to do everything that this world has to offer, travel to ever place, eat every food, meet hermits and shamans, scuba divers and abalone-pickers, weavers and clothes dyers, carpenters, and paint-brush makers... I want to know the world, and I just don't think that studying my way into a deadbeat career is the way to go.

 I'm living now and doing whatever it is I'm doing and I'm pretty serious about it because I'm not dead yet.... Johannes introduced me to a wonderful music project called OTT, and in one song there is a quote by Alan Watts that follows,

"...We've simply cheated ourselves the whole way down the line. Because we thought of life by analogy with a journey—with a pilgrimage. Which had a serious purpose at the end and the thing was to get to that end; success or what ever it is or maybe heaven after you're dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing and dance while the music was being played..."

When Alan Watts creeps into my head, it all seems so mundane, but at the same time, I don't want to have a job that stresses me to the point where I fall asleep frowning on the busride home and dread waking up in the mornings; when I have no appetite and no desire to do anything but crash when I get home. Nope, I can't to let this continue, if I do I'll just be a terribly grumpy coworker and piss off some of my closest friends and colleagues. Hmm,  I'll figure something out, I guess I always do... I'll just get started with this Swedish course that I got into and hope that once my language skills improve I can study something at some other schools and at least be inspired to do something else. Who knows what that will be... oh here it comes, all those thoughts, uncertainties, questions, stresses, shut up, just go to sleep......