Mental Anguish: Command Not Recognized
How does someone rise above mental anguish?
Okay, I’m not asking for a friend. I’m really asking for me.
Speaking from personal experience, mental anguish consumes the mind. Thinking positive thoughts, going to a “happy place,” and other mental rebooting techniques don’t work when the hard drive itself is defective.
It’s like trying to run Windows 10 on Bill Gates’ first DOS system. At the command prompt enter “Windows 10 is great!” “Windows 10 will make you have a great day!” “Imagine Windows 10 booting up into your reality.” “Windows 10 will do this or that.” Do that for 5 minutes, 5 hours, or 5 days, and you will continually receive the same error “command not recognized”.
So what am I to do? How do I get an old DOS machine to run Windows 10?
Bill Gates! Help! Actually, he couldn’t even get that to run.
God! I need a miracle!
Starting With What We Have
We all must start with whatever we have, right? I have a broken down DOS system, that is, extreme mental anguish. Not a fun operating system to have.
I hate my job more than any person will ever know. I detest it! Years and years of having a job that I detest has brought me to the utter brink of distress and misery. Ground Zero! Seriously, I had rather be dead than to step foot in that place ever again. But I don’t have the courage for a do-it-yourselfer. Some people do it for selfish reasons, but I think others do it because of anguish, where there is no hope and no way out of a desperate situation. For these people, I think it takes a lot of courage.
When I first started working I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the work, the learning, being appreciated for doing a good job, having a chance to move forward and do new things.
Then it happened. The company I worked for stopped producing the product I worked on. The dreaded layoffs happened. Soon thereafter I got a new job doing pretty much the same thing but in a very different environment.
Corporate High School
Previously I worked on a team with a common goal, an actual company goal, where everyone was necessary and appreciated for their position. But I returned to a high school version of work where there were cliques, cool kids, and not so cool kids. People who had worked there longer than me joked about the cliques and cool kids. I thought they were being cynical. But soon enough, I discovered they were right. And I was not one of the cool kids.
Please note that before this major discovery, I hated the job because it was so boring and moved like a herd of turtles. On top of that, people who do what I do, though the highest non-managerial salaries in the company, are treated like less-thans and have-nots.
When I discovered for myself that I was indeed working at a corporate high school, I began disliking the job, its hall monitors, and cool kids even more. I detested the disdain they had for us underlings.
Moreover, I realized my life could be defined by one work—stuck. No chance to move. No chance to move up. “Stuck” doing something I hated at a place I hated is not fun. Because one sure fact remains. Cools kids never help not cool kids. That’s only in the movies.
The mental anguish increasingly worsened and that is the miserable place that I find myself in today.
C: For Cash!
For most of my career a job has never been only about the money. Although that is why people work, to me the money was just icing on the cake. I’m now looking at this attitude as the source of my mental anguish.
Recently I have come to accept that I will never be given the opportunity to do something that I enjoy at corporate high. This acceptance has led me to rethink my DOS prompt. Instead of “Windows 10 fabulosity!” I’m going to the root drive C:. “C” for cash. From now on I will update my memory, in an infinite loop, with the input “this horrible job is only about cash. The only reason I do it is cash. The only reason I stay is cash. Who cares if I like what I do? It is the cash I’m after.”
The cool kids don’t care about me so why should I care about them or making them look good? It’s all about me now! It’s all about my cash!
As you can see, this puts me in a position of returning to control over me. No more being sucker-punched and shot down by the high school elite.
And you know what? I like it! I like being at the base C: prompt. After all, this is where it all began for Bill Gates. What doors will it open for me?
Freedom At The C: Prompt
Being at the C: prompt helps me in two ways.
- I can freely look for another job to earn cash and not care if I will actually enjoy doing the job requirements. You know why? Because it’s all about the cash, baby!
- It alleviates the pressure of being a master of all job requirements listed on any job listing. In the past, I have read each requirement with the attitude “I don’t really like doing that, i.e. I don’t want to learn how to do that,” etc. But now? One word. Cash! Plus I have watched enough incompetents get jobs because of being cool rather than the fact that they can do the job well.
I believe landing a job you were “meant to do” is a matter of “luck.” My “luck” will come from having a new attitude and an open mind.
I’m sitting at the C: prompt but I’m not asking what would Bill Gates do. Instead, as cliché as it sounds, I am asking what would Jesus do. And that leads me to conclude that job-grace will come from prayer. Maybe it has already started? As Patti LaBelle once said, “I gotta new attitude!” and mine didn’t come from positivity training.
Charles Spurgeon says “Prayer is the breath of faith.” By faith I can actually move mountains.
The mental anguish of a broken-down hard drive? It’s a no-brainer (which is a good thing for someone with mental anguish).
Prayer:
Dear God,
I don’t even want Windows 10 to open! Instead open doors to new opportunities! Big wide doors! Oh Lord, I want to feel alive again. I’m tired of dreading Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Then all day Saturday and Sunday I am dreading Monday again. You know I go around like the demon-possessed man in the tombs, randomly yelling “Don’t make me go to the abyss!” Lord God I have prayed for a new job where I enjoy what I do for 17 years. Oh God don’t delay any longer. Please I’d rather be dead than to ever set foot in CorporateHS again. Not my will but Yours be done. Jesus, help! You know the mental anguish is really unbearable.
In Jesus Name I pray, Amen.
