How not to hate yourself when it’s all going wrong

There is no one I hate more than myself. I hate the way I look and the way I act. The fact I’m not clever enough, witty enough or thin enough. The fact I’m lazy, the fact I can’t motivate myself, I don’t take risks. I hate how stupid I am. I hate that I don’t stand up for myself. I hate my job, I hate my inability to drive and most of all I hate that I seem to be going nowhere.

I wake up, usually hours after I set my alarm for, and then I just kind of hang around doing little bits and pieces around the house to fool myself into this idea that I am being productive. Then I walk my dog- Kira and head off to my crappy part-time job. At my crappy part-time job, I work with people who still have a highschool mentality and there is always drama or some sort of playground argument that realistically 40-something year olds shouldn’t be having. And when I’m not getting grief from management or my colleagues, I’m getting it off the general public who literally just seem to hate me for existing. After a measly 4 hour shift, I head home, get in bed and just scroll until I get so sad that the only way I can calm myself down is by sleeping, all to repeat the same routine the next day. Surely there is more to life than this.

When I was at university I really thought I had a proper career in me and now it just seems as though I’m wasting my life away. Maybe I’m just having a bad week and that’s putting an overly negative spin on everything, but I just can’t help it. There must be something so fundamentally wrong with me, I must have done something so cosmically wrong and irreparable in a previous life because in this life absolutely nothing seems to work in my favour. But look, I could sit here all day and just list things that are wrong, but where will that get me? Absolutely nowhere. I can feel like I am running out of time, but what am I even running towards? What reason am I rushing through life for? What end am I trying to get to? I recently saw a post online that said, “In your twenties you feel as though you are losing the race. You have to remember that there is no race.”

So now that I’ve managed to put myself in such a bad mood for a week, what can I do to get myself out of it? Well the harsh reality is that I need to get a grip. I need to invest in myself, put care into the things I do. Act in a way that is meaningful, do things that make me happy.

The first issue is my job. I hate it. I have somehow found myself working in one of the most reductive and exploitative industries there is, and no somehow I’m not talking about journalism or the media industry. I hate my job, I hate the hours and I really do hate the people, not all of them though which is why I think I feel so tied to it. What about the people I would be leaving behind. Unfortunately for them,I think it is time to live for myself. I need to leave and get out of the job as soon as possible and yes I know that is a tall order, I have been stuck in this hospitality purgatory for around 18 months now, I need to move on. The answer here is pretty simple, I need to apply for more roles, I need to be open to new opportunities. I need to stop boxing myself in. I have let my world become so small that I am afraid of what is actually out there. Therefore, I need to look out for opportunities that may arise. I need to actually spend time and put effort into applications. Yes, I know it is awful and feels like a waste of time and energy only to be met with an “Unfortunately” email, or even worse a total ghosting situation. But at some point I am sure it has to pay off. It can’t stay like this forever, people will retire, companies will realise that they need to hire young people (hopefully) and I will make something of myself. In the meantime, there are other things I could be doing, like this Substack for example. I could post more on social media, try to gain more exposure, write for more publications. Try and gain my spark back.

Unbelievably, as fucked as the current job market it, that is the easier of the two issues to solve. How can I stop hating myself? How can I change what is wrong with me when I don’t even know the reasons why I am the way I am? The short answer, I don’t know. I don’t know what it is that I could possibly do that will allow me to find fulfilment, I fear that there will always be a part of me missing. I think that the simplest answer is that all I can do is try my best. I can spend time with the people I love. I can allow myself to fail, I don’t have to chase perfection. I am allowed to keep learning. It is okay to not make visible progress every day. I need to stop being so hard on myself. Spend more time in the real world. And truth be told, I’m not sure if there is going to be a happy ending for me. Maybe it will all amount to nothing, but what I do know is that all I can do is pick myself up and try again. And remember, no matter what, you are never stuck.