I’ve officially been back to work for five full weeks now after having almost 9 months away from full-time work so I thought I’d share some of my observations and feelings. Sorry if this is depressing. Welcome to Thinking of Money. 🙂

For context, I landed a fully remote job working for a tech company. It’s not just covid remote – there is no office for me to go into even after we’re all vaccinated.

Observations

• I want alcohol. It’s not like I’m an alcoholic craving wine when I wake up, but I am noticing that in the late afternoons/early evenings I’ll crave a glass of wine. I didn’t really have this feeling during my brief retirement period. I guess I crave it to take the edge off of a stressful day. I try not to give into the feeling though, especially Mon-Thurs because alcohol is expensive! Gone are the days of cheap Costco alcohol in America.
  
• More takeout. I’m not really the cook of the family anyways, but we’re definitely both more open to takeout after work. Even when we have the time to make food, we just don’t want to. We’re tired and would rather do something else. This is where meal prepping is important and something we need to put more effort into.
  
• I’M TIRED. Seriously I’m so sleepy. We’re back to those Friday night feelings of not being able to stay up past 10pm despite all intentions of watching a movie and enjoying our Friday knowing we don’t have to get up the next morning. I’m just really sleepy in the evenings.
  
• Mood Swings. This really sucks. I don’t love work. I barely like work. I won’t go into detail here because I’m sure there’ll be plenty of blog posts to come about my distaste for work/office politics/colleagues etc etc. I’m finding that I’ve felt angry feelings like I haven’t had in months and feelings of sadness that I haven’t had in months. I know that really this is my fault and not necessarily work’s fault but again, I’m sure there’ll be more blog posts to come on this.
  
• I’ve cried 3 times. See above. I’m sure this point could have been wrapped up with the above point but it’s pretty major to me and mildly concerning that I’ve cried 3 times in 4 weeks (I didn’t cry last week), and before that I actually can’t remember the last time I cried. Some of this could have been PMS – but I’ve also PMS’d the last 9 months and can’t remember crying. Thank god for extended benefits – time to find a therapist.

I thought this was going to be a Positives vs Negatives type post but turns out the only positive I have is money. Earning money is nice.

Not having positives listed out doesn’t mean all of my job is bad. However when I look at the negatives above, I see them as things that didn’t affect me when I wasn’t working. For example, I wasn’t crying regularly when I wasn’t working, I wasn’t as tired, I wasn’t craving alcohol etc. So there are positive aspects of my job besides money, but they’re things that I already had in my life pre-job. For instance, I work with really really nice people. But I have really really nice friends and really really nice family. So while I’m happy I work with great people, I don’t need these people in my life <– Wow that sounds harsh. I also do like feeling productive, but I don’t need a job for that, I can get that in other areas of my life.

I’m actually truly hoping that maybe I’ll have a 3 month or 6 month update that has more positives in it. But truthfully I think this is why I choose to work towards Early Retirement. I work for money, that is the only thing I need from work that I can’t get in other ways through life. My job does not define me, I don’t seek self-worth from it, it’s just what I do to make money, to pay for the things I actually want to do.