in reply to Lying on the bed I made

ropey,
I went through a similar situation a few years ago. The advice that everyone has given through this thread won't work. Ok, I hope that caught your attention. Now I need to be fair. All these ideas can work but that heavily depends on you. In my situation, my job defined who I was. It took a paradigm change in how I looked at things. Work was who I was - so doing fun and interesting things outside of work didn't make the gnawing feeling of despair inside me any better.

In my situation, I quit. Through the years I took on more and more responsibilities, worked tireless hours and had a passion for work that bordered on the obsessive. People had come to expect and assume that I would do things and I knew there was no real effective way I could just go back to being a normal employee. I doubt making such a dramatic break will be necessary given your description of the problem.

A job is just a job. That is what I had to accept before I could be happy when my job wasn't satisfying. Don't get me wrong, it is still far more pleasant to work at a challenging and interesting environment but I no longer need that to feel complete. I have joined the perl community, worked on open source projects, solve difficult brain teasers and satiate the need for mental stimulation elsewhere. Don't get me wrong, a job is important and we should care about it and make it the best we can. I just needed to accept (for me) was that it was a source of income and not defining point in my life. If it turned crappy but was bearable (for that me, that meant not bubbling over into my personal life outside of work) and the alternative was worse, I decided I could in fact live with it.

Unfortunately, I can't give you any advice on how to actually make that paradigm change. For me I went through a really unhealthy time before I made the break. It wasn't slow and gradual and I am glad I did it before I was married with a family because I think it would have been harder on them than it was on me. It wasn't enough for me to tell myself I would change. I did try that but eventually would find myself falling back into the same ruts.

Some people find going to a therapist or a life coach helpful (not to be confused with a psychoanalyst). I personally feel that they don't really give advice any different then friends and family but because you are paying for it, it seems more valuable and it helps. Some people that is - not me. I have one final recommendation for you but would prefer to discuss it in private via /msg. If you (or anyone else reading) is interested, feel free to ping me.

Cheers - L~R

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Re^2: Lying on the bed I made
by gwadej (Chaplain) on Jul 09, 2009 at 16:34 UTC

    I'm going to back up Limbic~Region with a slightly different take.

    A few years ago, I also went through something similar. But, I made a critical mistake. I stuck it out without really trying to look for another job. We had some good people at work. And none of us wanted to leave the others behind. (Add a new house and little one mixed in with the fun.)

    Despite being the senior technical guy left on staff, I was still laid off. Not long after that, I stumbled into a temporary contract doing SVG in Java. I had been playing with SVG to try and inject a little more interest into my technical life. Unfortunately, that didn't last.

    I found myself unemployed during one of the worst job markets in my field in my area. (Literally 3 months with no job openings in my field in a major city.) I eventually ended up taking an entry-level Java position a long drive from my house. despite well over a decade in the field.

    It took a few years, but I've worked my way back up to a similar level of income.

    Lessons I learned in addition to what Limbic~Region spells out includes:

    • that you may not get to choose when you leave (even if you are the senior go-to guy left)
    • You never know what technical skills you pick up on the side will help you out.
    • the loss of income was painful (and the loss of savings that covered the other), but it wasn't as fatal as I had previously assumed.

    This experience really solidified for me the guiding principal that I've held since. I can control my skillset and experience, but I can't control my job. The job can be pulled out from under you no matter how much you've worked and sacrificed for the company. But, they can't take away your skills and knowledge.

    G. Wade
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Re^2: Lying on the bed I made
by Your Mother (Archbishop) on Jul 09, 2009 at 17:01 UTC

    I went through the same situation last year and the advice I, and others, gave earlier did work1. Ok, I hope my use of contradictory bold text wasn't insulting. :) I think you make good points. I do believe that what one does for money is tied to one's psychology and I don't think that's bad or something to try to lose with therapy or chanting or whatever. Pride, and food for the children2, comes from what we do. It's natural and right. I'd say you did exactly the right thing as difficult as it was. Quitting stops being "exactly the right thing" when there are deep commitments (house, kids, etc).

    1 ...mostly. The "dream job" has turned out to be less "modern Perl + best practices" and more piling the spaghetti higher on a frustratingly bad and tangled decade old codebase. Honest work though, unlike the last gig, and with a nice team and room to look around for someone who is really doing Perl right.

    2 Accidental reference to an awesome HeavyMetal piece from... well, a very long time ago.

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      Your Mother,
      Ok, I hope my use of contradictory bold text wasn't insulting.

      Not at all. Just a few sentences later I say "All these ideas can work but that heavily depends on you". I made the assumption that ropey, who has been a PerlMonk since 2001, probably had heard or thought of this advice before but - like me, didn't find it worked. Of course it all did work for me after the paradigm change. I could very well be wrong about my assumption. I suffered for years before some pretty intense soul searching made me realize that what worked for others but not for me wasn't because I was broken. I know my post will only be appropriate for a small number of readers and I should have explicitly stated the starting assumption - but if I could save even one person from the misery I went through it was worth it :-)

      Cheers - L~R

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