If not this job, then what?

*Drafted sometime in 2018 but never published*

I have a job now, and I don’t enjoy it.  I find it hard to self motivate.  It’s related to feeling so out of my depth.  There’s so many layers of management that review and authorise everything we draft, so that can cripple my ability to feel it’ll ever pass. I’m also not clear on what our role can influence and change – external parties see us as being able to change laws, but really, it’s pretty unlikely.  Ministers wish we did more for customers, even when it’s a private company that now runs the company, not the govt.

I took this job as I felt I was stagnating in my previous role.  Not being challenged and not really learning.  It feels similar now; there was learning, but I mostly feel blah.

Whilst I was on a month’s break from the long standing job, I ended up brainstorming a business idea with my friends.  I didn’t really do anything more with it, other than meet with one of my priests to talk about their perspective.  It’s related to an industry where I could take an entry level job to test the waters.  When I had an informational interview with one family owned business, I realised just how lowly paid it is.

Prior to this call, I’d spent time analysing my expenses this year.  Looking at what I budgeted vs what I spent.  I don’t usually actively budget, but with the four weeks off work, I took half my usual salary and with some big bills, threw me for six.  When I look at all my spending (and not saving), I worked out the salary I could live on.

The numbers surprised me, they are low.

They just aren’t as low as this information interview number.

2 Replies to “If not this job, then what?”

  1. It must be so good to have a record of your thoughts at that time. It can be so hard later on to recall how and why and what was so intense and difficult, positive, blah or stimulating one year on.

    Do you have a difference in perspective now, after finding it in drafts from a while back? And has the travel put anything into perspective in the meantime?

    I admit to have instant reservations when I heard you say, ‘Entry Job’ to move sideways. I did that at about the same age as you and have a couple of points I can pass on.

    It actually led to a lifelong difference in super, retirement savings and all that. I do regret that now, that I took such a pay cut.

    But on the plus side, I did have an awesome time in a different industry for the next 10 years (swapping from teaching to building to teaching again.) And both jobs supplemented each other so I felt that I had a great amount of experience for either job in the end (with skills I could never have got otherwise.)

    But in retrospect, I wish I had gone full-out to made the sideways shift with shifting back to an entry-level job to do it. I wish I’d actually looked UP in salary goals, not thought that DOWN was the only way SIDEWAYS.

    Don’t know if that makes sense! And it might be pie-in-the-sky thinking. Ultimately, I have no regrets because I LOVED my building job and went to work happy every day for 10 years. Only left because the company shut-down and teaching by then was easier with a child, school holidays etc. I still wistfully look back to how much I actually could not wait to get to work. Which does not happen in my current job, even though I still find it rewarding and satisfying. But it’s work. The other job was fun!

    Good luck and ongoing fingers-crossed. Exciting times and hopefully you have the wiggle-room to be able to wait and find what is right.

    1. Thank you for your thoughts – I do (currently) have a resolve to aim for a comparable salary I’ve had so far. I can’t help feeling it’s a bit like big noting myself and might see me struck out of the running for some jobs (which don’t publish a salary but sneakily ask your salary expectations in the compulsory application questions! I also wish for that ‘wake up and want to go to work’ thing you mentioned!

      (It’s so great to have records of thoughts in the past, and whilst it seems irrelevant in some ways to publish now, it is also relevant to next steps)

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