Can't imagine working my office job until retirement. Has anyone switched careers and found work they love? (degree, jobs)
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SOm eof the keys that worked for me were trying not to take it too seriously and looking for a place with ok enough management and coworkers that it was either tolerable or even fun. The meeting, presentations, jargon, etc. at organizations is something to not take seriously and have fun with.
Also, things become better when you have other additional things in life that are fullfilling - family, a home, a hobby, etc.
I remember years ago sitting in a barber chair and my barber asking about my job. I was in my early 30's maybe and I said that I couldn't wait until retirement. My 70 yr old barber exclaimed "you must hate your job!" It hit me hard. Thus began my education on how to tolerate and even like my job, even thought it is in a regular ol' company. I eventually found another job that I hated less and kept learning about what I needed to like a job and searched for a gig with those aspects. My current position is far from perfect but it's much better and I don't hate it at all.
I've been holding corporate jobs since graduating college and I am just getting sick of it all. Even after changing fields twice, I find myself unmotivated and uncaring about the work I do. At every company I've worked at, I had no desire to grow into a managerial role. I'm tired of meetings, presentations, corporate jargon and the knowledge that my job is absolutely meaningless. I have to work to make a living and save for retirement but have no idea how I'll even last until then.
I do have an interest in working in wildlife, but this would likely require more schooling and/or a severe decrease in pay. I'm also worried that if I start on this career, I'll end up hating it too (after all, I used to dream of working in a corporate office and now I hate it). I honestly just want to get paid for doing nothing. Guess I should start buying lottery tickets...
Has anyone been in this rut before but got out of it to find something they love doing?
I've totally switched careers 3 times without huge problems. It did require more education, but I like taking classes and learning about new subjects.
If you aren't sure if you really want to go into a certain field, maybe you could take a course and see if you are interested? I thought I wanted to work in film, so I took some NYU film courses and discovered I did not like the actual work.
Since you are considering working in wildlife, there might be some volunteer work you could do in your spare time to get a feel for it. Another thing you might do is interview people who are already working in the field in order to get an idea of what the actual jobs are like. People love talking about themselves--so approaching someone for info would probably not be too difficult. Don't quit your job yet--just start researching the new field before jumping in.
My neighbor is a highly educated individual who had a very successful career as a CPA. As good as the $$$ was, he was bored stiff and frustrated. He long admired my work as a firefighter. I mentored him and, at the age of 42, he was hired and served for 28 years, retiring as a fire inspector.
And having to pay for your own insurance gets expensive fast, plus never having any paid holidays or vacations.
Amen to that!
13 months ago, I bailed out of the job I'd held for 8 1/2 years. Ironically enough, I enjoyed the work. Various extraneous factors were what led to burnout: Endless emphasis of quantity over quality. Blatantly apathetic colleagues who dragged down everyone. Continual department mergers - and layoffs (not all of them with advance notice to the person.) Outsourcing of back-office support to India (aka "off-shoring") which significantly slowed down issue resolutions and caused the amount of jobs sent back repeatedly for error corrections to skyrocket. Essentially zero opportunity for professional advancement. Etc etc.
Today I'm on call for a shipping contractor, with wildly varying hours (32 one week, 17 the next...) Benefits are non-existent, though of course the silver lining is a much larger percentage of each paycheck going into my bank account. But another down side beyond unpaid vacations and holidays is the health insurance issue. COBRA premiums are insane, yet scarily enough they're comparable to those of many private insurers' individual policies. So I've had to cast pride aside and go on Medicaid. I LOVE not being chained to a computer, and being in a "no brain strain" gig where everybody pulls their weight, cares about what they do, and has plenty of time to talk and joke back and forth all day. But anyone looking to jump ship from an established career has to take a long and serious look at how their bills will stay paid and their fridge will stay filled. My "out" was having established financial resources to draw upon, however these are finite hence my having to take the step I'm taking on the insurance side. Nobody, no matter how fed up they are, should leap into the void without a money cushion.
One of my former co-workers stays in touch, and for the most part what I hear is that the job I parachuted out of has only gotten worse. Even without that I have no regrets over leaving. I'd rather be in a position with more benefit to society (not to mention more lucrative and with set, full-time hours.) But there's no question that given the chance for a do-over I'd make the same choice.
Still searching. I had my own business for 5 years, which had been a lifelong dream. When it didn't work out, it nearly killed me. After a year, I am still grieving a bit over it. I am fortunate to have a job again and give it my best. Yet, I don't love it the way I should. My spirit is at a low point.
We live in a constantly changing world and it is too easy to lose interest and lose spirit for what we do. I have worked places where plans and priorities changed before an assignment was completed, where people leaving were never replaced until long after they left, so we'd get way behind (seeing if we could manage without the position, sound familiar?). One place, we had managers & team leaders come from the parent co. out of state and try to manage our teams. They knew nothing about what we did and didn't want to learn. They were mostly just PR people. The co. got merged, reorganized & moved until it no longer exists. Long timers there had seen storms before that passed & they kept saying these would too. But I was seeing too many new storms brewing, some of them seemingly on purpose & crazy ideas no jackass would think would work, being implemented. One of the local execs was a fine man who I liked a lot. But I heard him say many times "These are not normal times. You will see when things settle down". He was refusing to look at what was in front of him, didn't want to believe it. Similar happenings in many other businesses in our area too.
Regardless of your career, you need to build a fulfilling live outside of work. If your personal life is full, rich and active, you most likely won't notice the "few" hours a day you put in at work.
I used to do silicon valley programming building the guts for big websites. I got really sick of that but at one point was making more money than my dad who is a surgeon. I totally burned out and didn't do anything for a year and a half. Luckily I had a load of money saved.
I still do programming but now I just do it for music software. It pays about half of what I could be making but still pays ok and I think the stuff I make is cool instead of just some ad server I don't care about. Sometimes though some guy I used to work with will end up making 80 million dollars being part of a startup, and that kind of gets my goat a bit.
Last edited by rzzzz; 10-24-2014 at 09:32 PM..
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But another down side beyond unpaid vacations and holidays is the health insurance issue. COBRA premiums are insane, yet scarily enough they're comparable to those of many private insurers' individual policies. So I've had to cast pride aside and go on Medicaid. 
I LOVE not being chained to a computer, and being in a "no brain strain" gig where everybody pulls their weight, cares about what they do, and has plenty of time to talk and joke back and forth all day. But anyone looking to jump ship from an established career has to take a long and serious look at how their bills will stay paid and their fridge will stay filled. My "out" was having established financial resources to draw upon, however these are finite hence my having to take the step I'm taking on the insurance side. Nobody, no matter how fed up they are, should leap into the void without a money cushion.
