Back in the dumpster

Yeah, I'm feeling lousy. And I really shouldn't. I'm really not doing that badly, all things considered. I have friends with serious health problems. Friends with serious money problems. I don't have either of those things (so far). And yet...

See, this seems to happen every time I'm working in the field. The first couple of days I feel like utter shit, thinking about my failures that led me to be a 37 year old waste auditor when if I'd played my cards right when I was younger I'd be a university professor by now. And now that opportunity is gone. That fact was made clear to me just under five years ago, when I mused about trying to get back into graduate school, this time in science (which is where I probably should have been all along, but I began grad studies in philosophy because my marks were better in that subject at that time). My dad pointed out that by the time I could get a PhD I'd be in my forties, and competing for jobs with people in their late twenties. And as a professor and sometime department chair, my dad is well aware of the fact that departments generally want to make a long term investment, and therefore prefer to hire people who are younger than me. Which means, in lay terms, that I've blown it. So what to do now?

At the time, my dad suggested that I should try teaching high school. I've definitely considered that, but am discouraged by the fact that the one person I know who actually does it thinks that my temperament is ill-suited to that job, and I daresay she's right. I don't cope with stress that well, so that option is probably out.

I enrolled in the environmental technology programme in the hope of being able to find a job that at least justifies my existence, which is more than can be said for most of the jobs I'd done before now. But frustratingly, I'm actually a lot less happy than I was in some of the utterly meaningless call centre jobs I did in the past. Maybe it's the particular job I'm in, but the previous job I had was even worse. And doing market research is a lot like collecting welfare- you get a cheque, but don't really accomplish anything to make the world better.

I'm still checking the job boards for something in the same field, but it's getting more and more discouraging, and I have to admit that I've been looking less of late. Hardly anyone I've applied to has so much as called me. Many times I've seriously considered another career change. The most likely escape route for me would be to go into adult education, which would be a lot less stressful than teaching high school. The main thing that worries me is that it would probably be a one way trip; if I were to quit working in the environmental field, go back to school to be an adult ed teacher, and not find a job (or hate it even more than this job) I'd probably have little chance of getting back into this field even at the menial level I'm at now. So my level of desperation would have to increase to push me to make such a change at this point.

But oh well, I'll probably feel a bit less lousy later in the week; it always happens as the weekend approaches. Unfortunately, I'm looking at yet another truncated weekend, since I'm likely to be sent out to Bracebridge on Sunday evening. And if things go really badly this week it's possible (though not probable) that we might not leave till Saturday, which would not please me at all.