The Office.

This week I started an internship with the marketing department at the Ohio Union on OSU's campus. Having worked this new job for only a week, already I see how people become obsessed with their jobs. The competition, the office drama, and the feeling of being in a vacuum during office hours then you get home and remember all of the issues in your life outside of work.

It's been only a week and I've felt all of this. Already I feel stupidly competitive and eager to attempt to impress my superior like a real life Dwight Schrute. It's so frustrating to feel such a feeling of animosity towards people, especially when no one else of my fellow interns give a crap and are just there to get class credit and an easy minimum wage paycheck. There is no competition but inside my head. Were all in the same boat, yet, I can't make myself realize it.

I was expressing these new feelings towards a friend and he said "some people need to have credit given to them for what they do", and in the case of this job he would be dead on in describing my state of mind. However, I've never been that way with anything else. I don't remember trying to impress my boss in any other job or anyone else in authority over me. I suppose I feel this pressure because this is the first job that is actually potentially critical to my future in the work place.

The toughest part though, is the feeling of being inside of a vacuum. When I'm at this job all I think of is work, nothing else. I leave work, and all the responsibilities and issues of my personal life just flood my brain like a damn breaking. It drives me crazy. Granted however, the escape feels good, like being high or drunk. In the moment, I'm miles away from problems and issues in my life. Then I sober up at 5, the hangover begins, and all the issues that were there before I binged on whatever drug, reemerge twice as hard.

The worst part about being trapped in my work vacuum is keeping God the focus. That's probably where a lot of these feelings of needed validation, competitiveness, and tunnel vision come from. It's difficult, especially because this is the first job that I have ever really had to use my brain, ever. Every other job I have ever had has been manual labor where I am just performing some mindless task over and over again. When doing these mindless tasks, my mind wanders in a good way. I think about God, I pray to God, I think about people, unfortunately that mindless luxury is gone.

I need to find a way to deal with this new way of working. I need to find a way to keep God the focus even when a lot of my brain power is going towards my job. I hope that I can figure out the balance that people, such as my father and many other friends, have found in their work place.