Thanks for your response Anita. I am in a much better head space today, for some reason I was very moody yesterday. I get what you are saying though my point still stands. All of those examples make sense and my answer to my own original question to them is you can’t compare youreself to others as situations are different.

However the more similarities between two people in the past the more opportunity there is for jealousy to develop. My friend and I were very similar and almost due to a coin flip he now has everything I wanted. Specifically a job he loves that is stable and challenging with chances of progression. He gets to tell people hes worked on final fantasy XV and Battlefield 3 and call fo duty and people are genuinely interested and he works with likeminded people. I on the other hand am bored most days and have a dull lifeles job with no progression and way too much workplace drama for my taste. And I am simply not qualified to do anything else nor is there anything I wanted and even if I did you need so many qualifications these days I simply cannot afford education.

We were once so similar but now he has spent 5 years or more becoming even more capable in his field and I have had to struggle to keep my head above ground. I could argue that due to luck (though not luck alone, I am not saying he isn’t skilled just that by comparison to myself we had the same chance and he got lucky) he got his chance and it worked out but that doesn’t mean hes any better than me but 5 years of professional work on AAA projects makes him unstoppable and certainly better than me now. He could get a job at most studios (and gets headhunted occasionally) and I couldn’t even get a junior role now. He has a better life than me, it’s that simple. His future has more prospects than mine by far and he is living his dream. I am sure he has other ideas but when he sees me on facebook I’m sure he has no interest in connecting and doesn’t feel much other than pity whereas I am consumed by envy when I see him.

How do I get over this? The facts are quite irrifutable his lot is better than mine. If I had another ambission I could move on but I simply don’t and not for lack of looking. I am not jealous of other peoples success I am jealous of this one guy because had a couple of things gone differently that could have been me.

I don’t focus on this day to day, just that when the mood strikes I get very emotional over it. I feel like I have been dropped on the heap, like my best times are behind me and now I have 30+ years of dead end drudgery ahead. It’s not event hat I begrudge him his life, just that what he has highlights what I don’t have and knowing how easily it could have been me it just eats me up inside.

It sounds silly to say but it’s like I have this weight that I drag around with me that if I could shrug it off I could move onwards towards a better future. But at the same time holding onto this weight is what is keeping me from finding a new future.

I may start a new thread on this actually as after writing this I think perhaps I need to let go of my past, maybe this is the weight I feel not neccessarily jealousy. I feel like a part of me is dead and perhaps my jealousy is that my friends dream is still alive but mine is dead. Maybe. I think the big thing that makes this worse is that not only was I made redundant, there are no jobs in my field anywhere close so I am mixing redundancy with a career change. Not to mention that I have no desires to do anything anymore, so when I should be working hard to change things I can’t even decide on a direction and at times I don’t even want to get out of bed.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 3 months ago by Ben.

Thanks Anita. Thats a good way to sum it up. He is living the dream I wanted and I resent that. I don’t resent him personally but any conversation with him results in my feeling bitter about myself. I resent myself because I know I need to drop this dream and move on but obviously I am struggling with that and although I have left it mentally I still feel the loss in my heart. I really wish there was a button to just cut this part of me off as its over a year and a half now and I am still walking around like a wounded lamb. I really hate that.

I guess the problem isn’t that life treat me unfairly but that I expected it to be fair. And the idea of another 5 year cycle of training to become something else that may blow up in my face again makes me want to give up now. I have bouts of enthusiasm but then I have months of feeling hopeless.

I am sure that as long as there are two people alive in the world there will be jealousy so I know I am certainly not he only one to feel this and I know others have much more grounds to feel this way than myself. I just wonder how you go about without this bitterness inside. I mean how do victims of serious crime get up in the morning? How do people in third world countries feel about those that have more than them? It makes my head spin at how unfair the world can be and here I am whining about some silly stuff while I have food, a roof, loved ones and leisure time. Its a funny world.

Thanks for your help Anita. After all this whining you wouldn’t believe I am a biker lol.

Ben

Thanks for the responses guys.

The only message I can get from this feeling is that I need a new goal or ambition. I aimed at my previous goal for a long time when I was growing up so an awful lot of my identity was invested in it. Losing it meant losing myself. It was how I distinguished myself, I may not be popular or have the most friends or have a car e.t.c but I was the best I knew at my art, it was my thing. Not only have I lost my ambition but I have lost my taste for art all together. But there is nothing in its place, no ambitions or goals, no real interests in anything. All jobs I see look dreadfully dull and the few that I have a chance at getting with my CV are low paid (all except my current role which is ok but not anything I want to stay doing). My current role was supposed to be temporary but as so often happens to other people I sort of stayed as there isn’t anything else for me. Its been a year and a half now and it just hit me that soon I will have been here as long as I was in games which is depressing considering there is nothing here for me besides a wage.

I know I need a new goal or passion but nothing really gets me going. I am looking at web design/development as it seems like the closest fit for me but I would be lying if I said I saw learning it anything more than a chore (usually). And unfortunately most blog posts regarding redundancy recommend getting training or education but surely when you are redundant is one time you certainly can’t afford this king of thing, I know I can’t. My options are severely limited.

I feel like I have nothing to be proud of, no achievements and no aspirations. I know I am ambitious and hard working but I have nowhere to aim at right now and at my current job I am wasting away being lazy and bored all the time. I very much wish I could click a button and get a new desire I feel passionate about.

Nina, I am satisfied with my partner, we are getting married next year and are currently planning our wedding. But outside of that I am afraid no I am not satisfied with anything really. While I recognise it could be a whole lot worse I also see that not only is it not what I wanted and worked to build it is also balanced on a knife edge and I see that were I made redundant again I could lose everything. Part of me wants to go for jobs that have good money but the passionate part of me (and the part that gets bored very easily) doesn’t want something soulless but I just do not know how to reconcile the two parts.

Thanks
Ben