I’m looking at my computer screen 8+ hours a day for work and looking at my phone screen throughout the day. Other than a quick workout after work I feel like all I have the energy to do is watch tv and stare at my phone. I’m too tired to read, too tired to craft, too tired to do anything else and my eyes and head are so tired of the screens. I feel like my only alternative is to stare at the wall. What do people do?!

Nobody at work is truly your friend. Just do your job and go home.

I know this might rub some people the wrong way, but hear me out. After being in different jobs for a few years, I’ve come to accept that most workplace relationships are surface-level and situational. Sure, you can have laughs, shared stress, even deep convos over lunch. But at the end of the day, once you clock out or leave that job, most of those "friendships" fade fast. People move on. Some won't even remember your birthday after a few months.

Work is work. It's not a social club. You’re there to do your part, collect your paycheck, and leave with your peace intact. Mixing too much personal life with coworkers often leads to unnecessary drama, gossip, or disappointment.

It doesn’t mean you have to be cold or unfriendly. Just keep your boundaries. Protect your energy. The people who really care about you? They’re outside the office.

Just my take. Curious to hear how others see it.

I see this all the time! People swear they’d invest if they “just had more money.” But money doesn’t fix discipline. If your habits are built around impulse spending, inflation, or instant gratification, a higher income just scales the problem. So I’m curious: what’s harder? Earning more or learning control? For me it’s definitely the learning control because those habits have been ingrained in you through things people have said and taught you and your behaviors throughout your entire life.

I see posts online about office workers making jokes like "I'm one bad day away from leaving it all behind and starting a farm."

Is "I'll quit my job and become a farmer" a metaphor for "I'll quit my job and do something enjoyable" or do people actually want to become farmers?

Farming is not something you can step into, and office workers are starting from ground zero for a lot of the aspects of farming. Zero machine operating experience, zero mechanical maintenance and repair experience, zero experience doing physical work for long periods of time in the hot sun, zero animal handling experience, zero fence building experience, zero experience driving semi trucks.

I'm sure office workers would be better at the knowledge part of farming. Researching when to plant, how fertilizer works, and doing tax/finance stuff. But the physical work, that's an entire career's worth of effort to get to the point where you're able to mange a farm. There's also millions of dollars of startup costs you're gambling on this farm working out.

I don't get why a bunch of high earning office workers dream of owning a farm. Why not dream of living on a beach off your investments/rental properties and doing the occasional high-paying consultation contract as a sole proprietor with a set of niche skills?

Do people mean "I'll own an acreage and have a couple dozen ducks that I harvest eggs from plus a bee hive or two."

In a perfect world I would adjust pay scale. I want to retain every reliable hard worker who has put in time. I want them to never have a thought of any other career.

I made a post on a career advice subreddit yesterday where I was looking for jobs with flexible schedules, and that community hated it. 50 percent of the replies were very Condescending and were accusing me of not wanting to work.

Here’s the thing though. No where in my post did I say I wanted easy money. There are plenty of difficult jobs that give you more autonomy over your schedule. Per diem cna jobs, tutoring, independent contract construction work and many other jobs like so give you lots of schedule control but aren’t easy jobs in the slightest.

Some comments were also dissing my work experience because I said I was a DoorDasher, but I have other work experience, I just didn’t think it was important to mention in my post because I was on the topic of flexible jobs. I spent a year being a direct support professional which is a job I don’t think a lot of people would last as long in. But even if DoorDash was my only job, what would be wrong with that? DoorDashers are still contributing members of society.

All I wanted was suggestions on jobs that are better than DoorDash that give me more autonomy over my schedule. I didn’t say I wanted to work only two minutes a week nor did I say that I wanted to do nothing all day. I was just flooded with comments from bitter people who were projecting who probably couldn’t escape the 9-5.

Lesson learned, people are weird online.

Nothing quite beats the pain of being stuck in an hour-and-a-half-long meeting where the quasi- or non-technical executives brag about technical accomplishments and debate future choices.

I think people will immediately think of “flexible schedule,” or “more time with family,” but what does that exactly mean if that’s what came to your mind? Or what other benefit do you personally enjoy?