Depression, anxiety, ADHD, and so on are on the rise because modern work is (mostly) bullshit

My experiences and struggles with the corporate world and what I learned about myself. How to be happy when not fitting in.

All my life I have done what was expected of me.

Not even by my parents or partner or any other individual, really, but rather by society itself. That invisible, not quite tangible pressure many of us feel — to conform, to go to university, to earn as much money as possible, to get one of those very, very well-paid office jobs, and, potentially, rise to management. Then you’re invited to those fancy dinners with other well-off members of society, expensive restaurants, golfing, sailing trips, whatever.

Status feels good. I’ve been there, for a short while.

When I started my first job after graduating, I was enthusiastic and ambitious; ready to join the elitist white-collar dream. My parents were uneducated refugees from the Yugoslav Wars, so hard, manual blue-collar labor was all they could ever dream of. They wanted more for their kids — as should be natural (but isn’t anymore). I was the first in my expanded family to get a degree; potentially the first ever in a long line stretching God knows how long into the past. It’s a fair assessment — my parents both grew up as farmers in small Bosnian mountain villages. They came to Austria owning nothing, not even speaking the language.

Everyone was proud of me for getting that degree. Finally, someone would make something of themselves! Social mobility wasn’t a lie after all!

Yeah.

About a week in, I knew the job was bullshit. But not only that: most other jobs there were bullshit as well. I was placed in an open office. I observed.

I saw people reading the news or shopping six hours of the day, only interrupted by the occasional phone call or email. I watched people bored with their lives, desperate with themselves, eager to do anything else, but, alas, trapped in the system. Once the first child arrives, once you get used to a certain standard of living, refusing to simplify, there is no going back. The hamster wheel, then, knows no escape.

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Why does life feel so… empty?

What You Are Missing in Life

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There are, of course, those who were eager as me, working hard and trying to rise along the strict hierarchies. Their enthusiasm was soon quenched, however. Colleagues cannot abide over-achievers. You quickly get put in your place. The toxicity, the enmity, the false kindness, always lurking beneath that surface of politeness and small talk, was overwhelming at times.

I worked in HR, to make it clear. Doing recruiting, employer branding, a bit of marketing, and so on. I realize other white-collar jobs may be different. Start-ups have different cultures than large corporations (such as the one I worked for). Software developers work differently than HR or marketing departments. But that isn’t the point.

The point is the emptiness and utter futility of it all. What the hell was I doing? Was this supposed to be my life, then? Pretending, like everyone else, to work hard, yet always knowing that what I was doing was not only unnecessary but also potentially harmful? There were people out there working so incredibly hard — such as my mother who’s worked as a cleaning lady for decades now — and they get paid a fraction of what I earned back then.

In the end, it’s about profit. Every cog must contribute to that overarching goal. But there’s something else at work here: one might think that capitalism would promote efficiency and eliminate useless jobs, but the opposite is the case. Not to delve too deeply into this — David Graeber thoroughly talks about this in Bullshit Jobs — but managerial feudalism is real. Every manager, particularly fresh middle managers, seeks to increase their status. The common way to achieve this is to have as many underlings as possible. Incidentally, two months before I was hired, a new manager took over the recruiting department. The first thing he did, though the department functioned well as it was, was to increase his number of employees, complaining, as is common, about being overworked, about having to delegate, etc. There are more factors at work here, of course, too detailed to discuss them in this essay, but the point is that jobs were created that should not exist.

Anyway. I was useless, I realized. My job was useless. The company was not only useless but produced things the world would be better off without.

Call it bore-out, burn-out, whatever, but I quit after a year that felt like a decade. I decided to do something useful with myself. I became a teacher.

The second mistake. Still not comprehending that I just was not made for white-collar ‘professional’ work, I tried my hand at something I wasn’t suited to at all. All my life I have struggled with a slight social anxiety, being introverted, and preferring to be alone most of the time. I thought I needed to fight and fix this. I lost the fight. I can function very well in social settings, can be charming and appear highly extroverted, but never for long. School demanded too much of it.

And here I am.

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Honestly, I’ve never been happier than I am now:

I Have Discovered That Giving Up on the World Can Set You Free

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You might be here, too. Anxiety, depression, ADHD… I was medicated, I talked about it, thought that I could ignore it, but I can’t. I always saw these as personal weaknesses to overcome and rise above.

But they are not. They are strengths. They are what I am. Fuck chemical imbalances. This is not something I want treated. I love it!

They appear only as weaknesses in a system such as the one we live in. A system that values conformity and appearances above all. Not to speak of how much easier it is for extroverts to do well in this particular scheme.

I just cannot abide the boredom, the futility, and the social pressures. (By the way: open offices are a plague. The constant noise, the never-ending keeping-up-appearences, the small talk — Oh, god. The small talk alone...)

I learned a lot about myself in these last few months. I am creative, much more driven than most people, project-oriented, positively obsessed when excited about something. I can work harder than anyone else, no matter the hours, no matter the complexity or exertion — but the one thing I cannot do is white-collar bullshit.

I have made my peace with that.

I will probably never again earn as much as I did in corporate. I will do blue-collar jobs now. Something where one is kept busy, where one uses their body, something concrete. Something actually valuable, no matter what the paycheck says. Every middle manager, every bureaucratic paper-shifter is higher paid than a nurse or a construction worker. Yet the world would be better off without that insurance guy, but much worse off without the cleaners or janitors of this world. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that, but nobody cares anymore.

Forget about it. Do what makes you happy. Forget about status, for it’s nonsense.

Earn your paycheck with as little pain as possible. Live simply, is my motto now. Be driven by passion. I will keep up my projects while keeping my mind free and unburdened at work. But you do you.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

What were your experiences? I realize this was all a very subjective analysis. Everyone is different, is the important thing.

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Hey! I’m Antonio Melonio, the creator of Beneath the Pavement. If you enjoyed this essay, please consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack or over on Patreon. It’s the best way to support Beneath the Pavement and help me put out more and higher-quality content. You’ll also get access to the full archive! If monthly contributions are not your thing (I understand), you can also leave me a tip or some coffee money over on PayPal. Thank you. Cheers.