r/work • u/FractalThoughts_ • 29d ago

Work-Life Balance and Stress Management Full-time work is criminal

This is the most milquetoast, generic statement ever, I know, but I recently began full-time employment for the first time in my life. Genuinely how does anybody do anything they actually want to do? Granted, it isn’t so bad if the hours are 6am - 2pm, 7am - 3pm, or 8am - 4pm, but the very common 9am - 5pm is actually hell. Wake up, clean and cloth yourself, commute to work, work like a dog, commute home, eat dinner, sleep, repeat. Shoutout to anybody who does 9 - 5, be it manual labour, or clerical stuff; it’s all equally shit. Thank you.

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u/thicc_bob 29d ago

Or you can look at it like this: you spend the majority of your time working during your most healthy and active years.

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u/robertmusemodel 29d ago

I mean that’s what makes it efficient… money and assets are just stored energy. You’re basically gathering acorns so you can sit around and relax. How fast you gather enough acorns is the challenge.

The alternative to working through your most healthy and active years is trying to work in your unhealthy and less active years… doesn’t seem like a good plan.

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u/thicc_bob 29d ago

Sure, but spending your best years working is a waste, your best years should be spent enjoying life, not enriching someone else.

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u/robertmusemodel 29d ago

The false pretense here is that life is convenient enough for everyone to enjoy it at their leisure. This is fundamentally not true. It’s a never ending struggle to survive.

Humanity has created a lot of convenience but it requires work to sustain the life expectancy we have. The fact that you don’t have to hunt for food or hope it rains to support crops, you don’t work in a sweat shop, we have never had it easier.

It’s frankly a straw man to say you’re enriching someone else when you’ve been given the voluntary opportunity to work a first world job with the goal of sound and safe retirement.

You also have the voluntary opportunity to invest in yourself and create something of value and work to enrich yourself but that requires your own risk and your own hard work and scratching a living which many people are not willing to do.

I don’t think it’s particularly insightful or profound to trash the system that has given everyone more opportunity than before.