When Work Feels Pointless and You Just Want to Quit

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Abstract

events as the American Revolution, the Alamo, the sinking of the Titanic, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Their lives were so interesting. Mine was modern, predictable, and highlighted mostly by trips to the library.I look back now with some regret on my desire, in those days, to live through a textbook page of history in my own time. I’ll take “Regrettable Things I Said Into a Wishing Well At Age 12” for 800, once Jeopardy! resumes production after this pandemic.But despite the now-cringeworthy and feckless wishes of an army of preteen history nerds (I know I wasn’t the only kid thinking life in early 2000’s America was pretty boring) most of us are still living out our own mundane and everyday, despite quarantines and lockdowns and worldwide attempts to contain a brand-new virus.My career these days is semi-essential. I work for a hospital, but my particular job can be done from home, so here I sit. There’s a lot to be done on the healthcare front, but my daily task list has shortened. This is frustrating. And, frankly, much of the time my phone calls and spreadsheet updating seem dull and unimportant. Perhaps what you are doing these days also seems dull and unimportant.But whether you’re wiping noses, teaching via Zoom, writing articles you think nobody will read or doing tedious data entry, a lot depends on your efforts (an awful lot more than what depends on a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain beside the white chickens).Your job

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keeps other jobs in motion. Sure, you might not be on the front lines, but you’re still keeping your own wheels turning, and that in itself is no small thing.The knowledge that other people are actually on the front lines has helped me to keep my apple cart moving. (Is that a metaphor? It feels like one.) It’s so easy to sink into a downward spiral of feeling like nothing I do really matters, but even just for the sake of my own sanity, my little efforts are not in vain. What can I do, really, besides support the real heroes by staying focused on my job? Not much, but maybe that means more than I think.I’ve thought many times over the last few weeks about just giving up. Not quitting, per se, but throwing in the towel temporarily, taking the PTO I’ve earned and just not clocking in for a week or so. It’s tempting.But whether or not I appear on the job actually does make a difference. I’m held back from the temptation by knowing that my coworkers need me. Maybe I’m not as well equipped to do my job as I was before — that feeling of impotence is pretty frustrating — but still, someone needs to check all those voicemails. Someone needs to answer messages. Someone needs to update the spreadsheets. By doing my small part, one bite at a time, I’m enabling others to take their own bites.Your work still matters. One bite at a time, you can push through this hard thing. There’s little glory in mundane monotony, but eventually you will finish.</article></body>

How does an ant eat a buffalo? One bite at a time.

I read the corny joke that I’m using in my subtitle at the age of ten. It appeared in the Dear America novel Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie, a fictional diary of Hattie Campbell, a girl in the 1850’s making the grueling journey out West along the famed Oregon Trail. Her family struggled through flash floods, cholera, accidental hemlock poisoning, near-starvation and utter exhaustion. But they kept pressing on. In the end, they made it. Like an ant eating what we would today refer to as a bison, not a buffalo (19th-century zoological categorization left something to be desired, after all), they took an almost insurmountable task one tiny bite at a time.

I keep thinking about the fictitious Hattie and her determined family these days, though it’s been years since I revisited the melodrama of those pages. I devoured almost every single book in the Dear America series as a preteen and young teen, fascinated by the mundane and the everyday in the lives of girls who had lived through such historic events as the American Revolution, the Alamo, the sinking of the Titanic, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Their lives were so interesting. Mine was modern, predictable, and highlighted mostly by trips to the library.

I look back now with some regret on my desire, in those days, to live through a textbook page of history in my own time. I’ll take “Regrettable Things I Said Into a Wishing Well At Age 12” for 800, once Jeopardy! resumes production after this pandemic.

But despite the now-cringeworthy and feckless wishes of an army of preteen history nerds (I know I wasn’t the only kid thinking life in early 2000’s America was pretty boring) most of us are still living out our own mundane and everyday, despite quarantines and lockdowns and worldwide attempts to contain a brand-new virus.

My career these days is semi-essential. I work for a hospital, but my particular job can be done from home, so here I sit. There’s a lot to be done on the healthcare front, but my daily task list has shortened. This is frustrating. And, frankly, much of the time my phone calls and spreadsheet updating seem dull and unimportant. Perhaps what you are doing these days also seems dull and unimportant.

But whether you’re wiping noses, teaching via Zoom, writing articles you think nobody will read or doing tedious data entry, a lot depends on your efforts (an awful lot more than what depends on a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain beside the white chickens).

Your job keeps other jobs in motion. Sure, you might not be on the front lines, but you’re still keeping your own wheels turning, and that in itself is no small thing.

The knowledge that other people are actually on the front lines has helped me to keep my apple cart moving. (Is that a metaphor? It feels like one.) It’s so easy to sink into a downward spiral of feeling like nothing I do really matters, but even just for the sake of my own sanity, my little efforts are not in vain. What can I do, really, besides support the real heroes by staying focused on my job? Not much, but maybe that means more than I think.

I’ve thought many times over the last few weeks about just giving up. Not quitting, per se, but throwing in the towel temporarily, taking the PTO I’ve earned and just not clocking in for a week or so. It’s tempting.

But whether or not I appear on the job actually does make a difference. I’m held back from the temptation by knowing that my coworkers need me. Maybe I’m not as well equipped to do my job as I was before — that feeling of impotence is pretty frustrating — but still, someone needs to check all those voicemails. Someone needs to answer messages. Someone needs to update the spreadsheets. By doing my small part, one bite at a time, I’m enabling others to take their own bites.

Your work still matters. One bite at a time, you can push through this hard thing. There’s little glory in mundane monotony, but eventually you will finish.