Ringing in the new year with an old job

Many of us were heavily impacted by what all occurred in 2020. For me, regular business in my self-employment venture of 12 years was reduced by half beginning in March of that year, forcing me to look for work elsewhere as many of my clients retreated to working from home. First, I began asking for more hours at a retail position I’d been working part-time at. Then, a buddy hired me on to help out in his HVAC company for a few months, mostly hauling around ladders and vacuuming air ducts. Nearing the end of that year I contacted a local staffing agency out of desperation and luckily was sent to a company I wound up remaining with full-time for the next 2 years.

Since then, I’ve bounced around a bit, returning to retail part-time for a while and then trying my hand at learning the role of pharmacy technician in a small town. But now, entering into 2025, I’ve been rehired for my position at that previous company and am excited for the renewed opportunity. Mostly because of what I’ve learned about myself since then, particularly coming to grips with my disdain for working in any retail environment. But beyond that it’s been a realization of my appreciation at this stage in my life to work with a machine versus in a social, public-facing position after many years of working in the latter. Long ago I had it somehow ingrained in me that I ought to be a social person interested in working with people, though I don’t know where that originated from. Maybe because I’m a woman and have a difficult time conceptualizing much of anything outside of a social framework, making retail and animal care seem like where I naturally ought to gravitate. Probably because service jobs are everywhere nowadays and thereby where nearly all of us are automatically directed. What I do know is that since working in an environment that, while team oriented, allowed me to work most of each day in a station with a machine handling non-sentient objects, I’ve missed it since leaving. It offered a measure of emotional freedom after forcing smiles and being mindful of my tone when working in customer service, while also freeing up my mind up to listen to podcasts, music, and audiobooks while productively working.

Repeatedly the thought has come to me in recent years that I want my mind for myself. Sure, we all have to learn on our jobs, but it’s remarkable how much mental energy some jobs consume relative to what they’re willing to pay. Sometimes that energy is invested in keeping track of countless details and navigating complicated computer software, and other times it’s consumed by near-constant human interaction and the need to appease. Worse yet if it’s a combination of both.

I guess time has taken its toll and turned me less pro-social. Maybe that’s a nicer way of framing becoming anti-social, but that sounds a bit too far. It’s a question of the type of socializing – when, where, why, how. Plenty of us enjoy socializing with friends and acquaintances and our partners and even our co-workers, but that doesn’t mean it ought to be a social free-for-all every day. Perhaps it’s perfectly natural and understandable to learn to set boundaries when it comes to being drained mentally, socially and emotionally, including by the types of work we accept. I didn’t realize all of this about myself until suddenly I did. And it’s good knowledge to have finally.

Which isn’t meant as a complaint about the various jobs I’ve had over time. Learned a lot from each of them and met plenty of nice people. But things change, or, perhaps more accurately, we come to learn who we are as we continue developing through different stages in life. In the timeless words of The Guess Who: “Seasons change and so did I. You need not wonder why.”