this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2025
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Self Improvement

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A community which focusses on improving yourself. This can be in many different ways - from improving physical health or appearance, to improving mental health, creating better habits, overcoming addictions, etc.

While material circumstances beyond our control do govern much of our daily lives, people do have agency and choices to make, whether that is as "simple" as disciplining yourself to not doomscroll, to as complex as recreating yourself to have many different hobbies and habits.

This is not a place where all we do is talk about improving "productivity" (in a workplace context) and similar terms and harmful lifestyles like "grindset". Self-improvement here is intended to make you a generally better and happier person, as well as a better communist, and any other roles you may have in your life.

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Hi comrades,

Long time lurker, very rare poster here. To make a long story short, I'm a humanist MA in my 30s who burned out of my first "real" corporate job. Struggled to find anything else, and started to worry that all the normal jobs my education qualified me to get were the same types soul-sucking office busywork. I quit, took a break and started working with kids (where I live government-subsidized childcare is a thing, so there are a lot of opportunities), but I'm again feeling burnt out. It's way more engaging and meaningful than the office work, but now my issue is that I don't feel intellectually stimulated at all. I'm in this fucked up limbo where on one hand, I've been conditioned to believe that my education is worthless in material terms (which it kind of is), and at the same time, I also know that I'm pretty smart, really good at doing research and have things to say - I just have no idea how to utilize these skills barring a return to academia - which kind of feels like running away (back to the ivory tower, I guess).

My question is this, are there any jobs that; a) provides an actual meaningful and valuable service, b) is still accessible to someone in their early 30s who wasted a lot of years not improving their CV, c) actually requires some conscious thought. Other than that, I'm open to anything. High pay is not a priority to me. If it also involves learning a skill that might be useful in a less than optimistic future, that's also a plus.

TL;DR: classic failed humanist with barely any CV. Tell me what to do, please.

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[–] Chapo_is_Red@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Same boat, but late 30s. Find meaning outside of work.

[–] OldSoulHippie@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

This is where I'm at. I'm 36, I hate my job, but it pays better than most things around here and I don't know how to do anything else. Sinking into my hobbies relieves some of the stress. Most people hate their jobs and I feel lucky to not be mining coal or something that leads to an early grave. I know, as a good communist I should strive for more and rally against the current system. I have in the past, and I would if there was any sort of support system. However, I need to focus on playing the hand I was dealt. Detaching from the "politics" of my job and just let management and coworkers fuck up is helping with my mental state. At the end of the day, I'm just a cog, and if I keep putting out fires behind the scenes, my managers will just keep getting away with it and what's more, they will get the credit for when I "deep state" things to work out well.

I know this isn't the advice that OP was looking for, but there's something to be said for checking out a little and not letting work get to you as bad. As long as your bills are getting paid I guess

[–] MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Your life is like a mirror to mine. Checking out helped me a lot, but I find it really hard not to care about things I know can be improved and know how to improve, so I always tend to fall back into the work trap again.

[–] OldSoulHippie@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago

Me too. I'm trying to just make peace with it. My window is closing for being able to do anything else

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