Make my job into what I need it to be

Was made redundant, so now I’m free. This is exactly what I wanted my job to be all along, non-existent!

I feel in a bad way where my work is concerned.

I work in a place which is comfortable in a lot of ways. I’ve been here for 8 years. Before this job my record was 2 and a half years. The people are great (mostly). The environment is really pleasant. The pay isn’t that hot but is ok. There are very little chances of promotional advancement. The work (writing software) is usually fairly interesting, occasionally very interesting, but doesn’t change a lot from day to day or from year to year which leaves me often feeling bored. I get the chance to do my own thing to some extent such as take a break and surf the net or write journal. I’m on flexitime but that is by negotiation rather than right which is an uncomfortable position to be in as they could take it away anytime if they wanted to (and if they did I’d have to get up at 6am – not pleasant for an extreme night owl like me). Sometimes the pace is relaxed, and sometimes deadlines loom and the pace can get a tad frantic. In other words, there are pros and there are cons in this place.

It’s easy to get sidetracked into doing a bit more of what I want to do (surf the net, write journal, read interesting articles in computing magazines, etc.) than the people in charge would like. It is especially easy to do this when the work is tedious. Often the work is at its most tedious when the deadlines are looming because then there are needs for quick, fiddly fixes to things which are boring, and the pressure of time strips the job of any pleasure that I may have otherwise found in doing it.

I wish I could feel that I was valued and held in high esteem by those in charge. I don’t at all and that affects my self esteem. It also de-motivates me and so I put less effort into my work, do my own stuff more and more, and as a result my productiveness slows right down & I feel even less valued.

All this is a jumble in my mind. I need to straighten it all out in my head & in the workplace. More than that, I need my job to be what I need it to be, and most of what I need is interesting work & to feel that I am valued for my skills and abilities. When I was in uni I was a straight A student, and I liked that. I felt like I was flying, and I put a lot of effort, thought, creativity into my assignments & projects. I always tried to put something special into everything I did, and I was rewarded well for that. I came out of my MSc in computing with distinction & class medal.

Yet here I feel the opposite. I feel I’m barely scraping through, not because of lack of ability but because I’m so fed up with being bored, unstimulated, in a rut with it all, and because I spend so much time during the day on non-work things in an attempt to get those neglected neurons firing up again. My effort, thought, interest & creativity goes into my own personal projects outside work, my writing, my endeavours with my own PC at home, my personal development, my personal goals. I want to give a damn about my work but mostly I just don’t anymore.

Yet I don’t want to leave. This job has some wonderful positive features & I want to keep that. Also, I don’t want to have to start all over again with new people in a new job. There is some status which comes from being in a place for so long. Being a newbie again doesn’t appeal to me at all – I’d rather stay where I am. And more still, in every job I’ve had, including this one, I’ve found the social aspect traumatic for the first year or so (and sometimes throughout my entire time there). I don’t want to have to go through that again.

I need to change this situation. I want to stay in my current job but I want to make it what I need it to be.