WPeregrine
Member
- Jul 22, 2026
- 23
So since past weekend things have been crashing down for me. For the first time in my life I went beyond ideation, and actually started testing setups... and today I completely broke down, and made 2 real attempts (FSH and PSH), that would have been successful if SI hadn't kicked in. My throat hurts to swallow a bit now, but otherwise I seem to be physically fine.
I feel hopeless, but after my 2nd failed attempt, I also feel like I really do not want to die. There's still things I want to experience in life. But I feel like I've run out of options, finding a way to actually make a fucking living. I'm starting to feel like I'm simply not capable of taking care of myself in this society... I want to experience life, but I don't know how to live and be a self reliant adult...
In the past half year I've been jobless, intentionally. I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do with my career, since I cannot keep on working myself to burnout every 2 years. In the past 10 years I've been working as a designer/engineer in the lighting industry. A desk job, effectively. But really, I'd prefer to do something with my hands. So after a bit of soul searching, I made a plan for a career switch - becoming an accordion repairer. I play accordion, so am familiar with the instrument as an (amateur) musician, but repair is a craft that I would need to learn from scratch. So realistically, I'd not be making a living doing that, for at least another 2 years. So I still need a job to make a living, while I'm learning towards my career switch. Especially considering I've been burning through a big chunk of my savings for the past half year...
I did find that job, which I started beginning of this month. On paper, its the perfect job, fitting right into my plans. Its 3 days a week, 100% from home, and the salary is actually sufficient to pay the bills. It is the same type of lighting job I've been running away from though, but given my experience, that's the only job type that'll pay enough on a 24h contract... which is what I will need if I want to have enough time left to learn my new craft, and build a business around that, that will start making money in the next 2 years.
I really thought I'd be able to make that work. I really thought that dream would motivate me enough, to sit out another 2 years of that lighting career that I'm trying to run away from, for the sake fo funding my switch. I really thought that at 3 days a week, it'd not drain me as badly as my previous jobs did. I really thought that the 100% from home thing would provide exactly the flexibility I needed to make this work. But just 3 weeks in, I'm ready to kill myself...
It's not the colleagues, they're great. It's not the boss, he's honestly fantastic. But there's just zero excitement for the work itself. Its not bad work, its an honest job, it actually makes a positive difference to broader society if I do it well, but I'm just not interested in it. It somehow feels even worse than it used to be in my previous job, even though that was objectively actually the worse job (shit boss, underpaid, and questionable societal value). It seems that having made up my mind about my career switch, has made it impossible to find even a tiny bit of enthusiasm for my current job... And since that job is 100% from home, zero motivation, means I'm not getting work done... How the hell will I explain that to my boss... How the hell will I explain this shit to anyone, my parents, my friends...
And if this was the first time I tried something different to get excited about working to make a living, that'd probably not have made me as depressed and desperate as I am now. But its not the first time... I've jumped jobs every 2 years basically, in an attempt to find a way in which I could actually function in a job to sustain my life. I've tried different sectors within the same lighting industry, different types of functions, I even tried running my own freelance lighting business. But each job ended with me on the brink of burnout, despite often great working conditions, lovely colleagues, and supportive employers (except for the last one in 2025).
I'm not made to do a desk job, is what I concluded. But its the thing I studied for, and the thing I got experience in... so I hardly have a choice, if I want to make enough money to afford my apartment... but if I can't even manage to stay sane in a 3 day wfh job... how the hell am I going to get by in this society? And honestly, while my career switch plan does feel closer to my heart, I'm very worried that I'll still run into the same motivation/burnout issues doing that...
I went to my GP yesterday, asking for referral to a psychologist (not the first time I'd do therapy btw), but they want me to speak to their own mental health specialist first, before referring me to a psychologist - supposedly to define my help question better, so I can get more targeted treatment from a psychologist - which, fine, I kind of follow, but that specialist I can only see in 1 month from now, and a psychologist will probably be at least another month if not more, while I'm here being actively suicidal... If I was able to hold a fulltime job, I'd just pay for a psychologist without a referral outside of insurance, and get help right away... but alas, I cannot afford that now... and I feel lost.
What the fuck do I tell my boss... "Oh sorry, I didn't finish that calculation, in fact I didn't work half my days, because I was busy hanging myself?"
I feel hopeless, but after my 2nd failed attempt, I also feel like I really do not want to die. There's still things I want to experience in life. But I feel like I've run out of options, finding a way to actually make a fucking living. I'm starting to feel like I'm simply not capable of taking care of myself in this society... I want to experience life, but I don't know how to live and be a self reliant adult...
In the past half year I've been jobless, intentionally. I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do with my career, since I cannot keep on working myself to burnout every 2 years. In the past 10 years I've been working as a designer/engineer in the lighting industry. A desk job, effectively. But really, I'd prefer to do something with my hands. So after a bit of soul searching, I made a plan for a career switch - becoming an accordion repairer. I play accordion, so am familiar with the instrument as an (amateur) musician, but repair is a craft that I would need to learn from scratch. So realistically, I'd not be making a living doing that, for at least another 2 years. So I still need a job to make a living, while I'm learning towards my career switch. Especially considering I've been burning through a big chunk of my savings for the past half year...
I did find that job, which I started beginning of this month. On paper, its the perfect job, fitting right into my plans. Its 3 days a week, 100% from home, and the salary is actually sufficient to pay the bills. It is the same type of lighting job I've been running away from though, but given my experience, that's the only job type that'll pay enough on a 24h contract... which is what I will need if I want to have enough time left to learn my new craft, and build a business around that, that will start making money in the next 2 years.
I really thought I'd be able to make that work. I really thought that dream would motivate me enough, to sit out another 2 years of that lighting career that I'm trying to run away from, for the sake fo funding my switch. I really thought that at 3 days a week, it'd not drain me as badly as my previous jobs did. I really thought that the 100% from home thing would provide exactly the flexibility I needed to make this work. But just 3 weeks in, I'm ready to kill myself...
It's not the colleagues, they're great. It's not the boss, he's honestly fantastic. But there's just zero excitement for the work itself. Its not bad work, its an honest job, it actually makes a positive difference to broader society if I do it well, but I'm just not interested in it. It somehow feels even worse than it used to be in my previous job, even though that was objectively actually the worse job (shit boss, underpaid, and questionable societal value). It seems that having made up my mind about my career switch, has made it impossible to find even a tiny bit of enthusiasm for my current job... And since that job is 100% from home, zero motivation, means I'm not getting work done... How the hell will I explain that to my boss... How the hell will I explain this shit to anyone, my parents, my friends...
And if this was the first time I tried something different to get excited about working to make a living, that'd probably not have made me as depressed and desperate as I am now. But its not the first time... I've jumped jobs every 2 years basically, in an attempt to find a way in which I could actually function in a job to sustain my life. I've tried different sectors within the same lighting industry, different types of functions, I even tried running my own freelance lighting business. But each job ended with me on the brink of burnout, despite often great working conditions, lovely colleagues, and supportive employers (except for the last one in 2025).
I'm not made to do a desk job, is what I concluded. But its the thing I studied for, and the thing I got experience in... so I hardly have a choice, if I want to make enough money to afford my apartment... but if I can't even manage to stay sane in a 3 day wfh job... how the hell am I going to get by in this society? And honestly, while my career switch plan does feel closer to my heart, I'm very worried that I'll still run into the same motivation/burnout issues doing that...
I went to my GP yesterday, asking for referral to a psychologist (not the first time I'd do therapy btw), but they want me to speak to their own mental health specialist first, before referring me to a psychologist - supposedly to define my help question better, so I can get more targeted treatment from a psychologist - which, fine, I kind of follow, but that specialist I can only see in 1 month from now, and a psychologist will probably be at least another month if not more, while I'm here being actively suicidal... If I was able to hold a fulltime job, I'd just pay for a psychologist without a referral outside of insurance, and get help right away... but alas, I cannot afford that now... and I feel lost.
What the fuck do I tell my boss... "Oh sorry, I didn't finish that calculation, in fact I didn't work half my days, because I was busy hanging myself?"
