Total mindfuck...and not in a good way

So, something good happened. But then I realized it's not going to turn out to do anything but create false hope. They have finally given me actual work at my job, which I may have talked about in my last blog. (I've been wrapped up in creative stuff, which has been pretty groovy, but it's incredibly time consuming.) The new responsibilities have caused me to step back and take a look at things, such as making progress.

In an ideal world, my new responsibilities would set me up for a promotion and a raise, and I would stop doing the stupid mindless piddly shit that I do on a daily basis. But I don't live in an ideal world. I work for the shittiest company in the world. (Okay, that's hyperbole, but it's probably up there.) I will continue to do the shitty work as well as the good work, and I will not be paid for the good work even though someone in any other company doing what I do now gets paid twice as much. So I'm a glorified intern. Although the "glory" really only amounts to a teensy wittle "weekly allowance." (Actually, I've been an intern, and I was treated like a princess compared to here.) There is no progress to be made at my company. I will never move forward, up, sideways, or even down. I'll just stay exactly where I am.

But now there's a chance I can go somewhere else. I have a connection at another company who is trying to help me out, but since he's busy, I have to pester him. And that makes me feel like a dick. I hate being a dick when it comes to getting help from friends, but he actually knows firsthand how miserable I am because he has my company as a client. He is dealing with the very people who have created my bordering-on-scandalous work environment.

So, I'm at the job where I can't go anywhere and I'm delicately annoying the shit out of someone at another company that might not have a job for me anyway. And there are, at this point, no other jobs out there. For a long time, I got used to having absolutely no hope of finding another job because of the complete and total lack of skills I've developed at my current job. But now that I have been given an actual responsibility that other jobs require - or rather proof of a marketable skill that I'd always had, but for which there existed no evidence - it's kind of worse. Because now I should be a commodity, but there's nowhere for me to go. This feels like solitary confinement. Being stuck in a tiny room with one window, and you know a guy who might be able to open it, but he's not making any promises. And he probably can't deliver anyway, even though he's gonna try. But I know the way out. I know exactly how to get out, someone just needs to open the door for me because they're all locked from the outside. This feels like mental torture. My head is going in circles all day long, like a hamster in a wheel. That's what I am. A hamster in a wheel that has wedged itself into a corner.

If anyone is reading this, please send every positive karmic vibration my way. I'd never ask this of others, but this is the most mindfucked I've felt in a looooong time.