I work out 4-5 days a week and eat a pretty sleek low carb diet. I work in Information Security where I am at a desk for most of the shift in a soul sucking office environment. I also work as a cop where I am up and moving for most of the shift in a pretty decent area with a lot of domestic violence and drug crimes but not too many other biggies. Comparing an average or slightly above average shift at my desk job vs. a brutally busy shift at my cop job running call after call after call like a dog.. The desk job shift drains my energy like 100x more. The toxic office environment sucks out my soul and some nights I come home and I can't even get enough energy to fix dinner I am so wiped.. I just go to bed... The cop job isn't perfect but it doesn't suck out my soul.. I'm working on making some changes so I can eventually quit my soul sucking technology gig. But right now it's hard to give up making 100k to go back down to 30-60k as a full time cop in my area. But I know I need to do it or there wont me anything left of me to enjoy the money anyway.
I think in general, having a job in 2018 is just HARD. I worked in the tech field in the 1990s and I used to come home kind of tired but nothing at all like this. Its the people that tire me out. Not the work. People are difficult if not impossible to navigate anymore. IMO in an office environment they can really get you, much more so than in a job where you are out and about..
Really interesting post, I think a lot of it is down to the modern day social environment in offices, indeed.
90% of my stress comes from the people at my job rather than the actual job. Having to listen to them all b*tch and gossip, constantly worrying whether I have a good working relationship with my boss because he's so socially awkward and hard to please etc.
I can do physical labour as a hobby and I don't feel anywhere near as drained. I've sat around at home doing woodwork or model painting/terrain design for like 9 hours straight and I feel fine afterwards. But a week in the office leaves me feeling like I've been awake for 72 hours.
If I were to describe it I would call it "synthetic fatigue". The fatigue brought on by living a life that isn't in tune with our natural biology. We weren't really designed to sit at a desk for 16 hours a day having to constantly interact with irritating humans we'd normally ignore.
It's one reason I really want to start a business, so I know at the end of the day when I'm exhausted that at least I'm doing it for me, not for some corporate exec at a golf club somewhere.
