I’m in a field where remote work should be possible, but I’m not lucky enough to have landed such a job. I have to go to the office every single damn day.
It’s an 8 hour job, but I have mandatory one hour lunch, so it’s really 9 fucking hours. Comute is about an hour each way, so that makes 11h total. Oh, but wait, I take transport and have to wait some time for a bus one way or the other, so it’s more like 11h30.
To wakeup and get ready for work I need 30 min minimum, but really 1h is better. So it’s up to 12h, or 12:30. Let’s round it to 12:15.
That’s half my damn day. If I want to sleep for 8 hours, that leaves me 3h45min at most each day for myself. And I don’t even get paid enough to move out. Which I guess is a positive in this case, because that way I don’t waste my <4 daily hours taking care of tasks which my parents can help with (cooking, groceries, etc.)
Ironically, if I did get paid enough to move out I might be even more depressed.
I would recommend spending that time on looking for a better job.
Thats absolutely a great thing to do. Depending on OP’s skills/employability at this second it may not yield a much better job than they have currently. However, if there is a better job available with no other change needed, this would be a great use of the time to search for it.
I was in a similar situation to the OP where I didn’t like my job but had these pockets of time that I could use for change while still keeping my job and being paid. I did not have a college degree and used this time to get one while still working. It took many years (because I couldn’t go full time), but I was successful in getting that degree and used it to get a significantly better job. When I was at the beginning I saw the time was going to pass whether I put the effort in to improve or not, so I chose to use the time to get something of value instead.