The saga continues: AM 6

[mat422]

Desire to bail on stage 7 and move to dmsi is at an all time high. You guys might think I'm crazy, but I'm like 90% certain my external reality has been shaken up to get me to move on from this toxic job because I won't take the initiative to do it. I'm going to stick it out with stage 7 until 32 days, hopefully something breaks and I start moving on.

But anyway with the job. I've got my availability in the afternoons only during the week. Mornings I walk dogs and do job searching. Today I got a call at 5:50 am asking if I could cover a stock persons shift because they called out. I looked at the phone when it rang and said **** it and went back to sleep. I called up later when they were open and I had to explain to my manager how I'm absolutely not available any mornings/early afternoons during the week. The fact that I had to do this irritated me. He's struggling, I get that. He pretty much took on a role with impossible demands with the limited amount of resources he has. But I'm done apologizing for not being available because the whole retail part time system is terrible to employees. You have an erratic schedule, you're expected to dedicate your life to the store for minimum wage, and they have you on call all the time. I answer the phone out of courtesy, but it's really stressful knowing that I'll almost always get some kind of call on my day off asking me to come in.

Here's my biggest issue, I have a tendency to take on the burdens of other people. When I see someone struggling I want to help. The problem is most of the time they drag you down too. It's like when someone is drowning and you go to help, they'll pull you under and drown you too if you're not careful. In situations like these I feel like people are metaphorically drowning in crappy situations and you want to help, but you have to help in a safe way that isn't going to compromise your own life as well.

Like I said, boundaries. Often times what happens is in these situations I have trouble dealing with the fact that the person is both good and bad in certain ways so it'll go one of two ways. Overlook all the bad stuff and compromise my own mental health or make them out to be a bad person so I can more easily say no and avoid being influenced by them. Neither of which is particularly healthy.

While running AM Stage 7 I had more and more thoughts brewing about quitting my job. I bailed on Stage 7 about 20 days in or so, and a few days later I had enough and quit my job. It actually ended far better than I could have hoped for, and now that I'm away from my stress-inducing scenario (my job) I have the urge to continue and this time finish my run of the refresher stage.

If you have to quit your job then you have to quit your job, but speaking as someone who quit his job and also bailed on the refresher stage, I would trust these new feelings and thoughts that AM is instilling into you, and if things are so bad that you have to quit, then yeah, you have to quit.

I definitely intend on leaving this job. But I want to find something before I quit. I've quit before without having anything lined up and the only thing more stressful than being in a shitty job is not having a job and barely getting by financially. So far it feels like stage 7 is strengthening my ability to tolerate whatever crap comes my way at this job. And I've always run away from things in my life as a solution. Maybe this time it's important for me to learn how to set boundaries and be more dominant and strong and not let people push me around. If it really gets so bad I have to leave, I will. But right now I feel like I'm getting more courage to say no and stop feeling guilty about putting my own needs above everyone else.