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Mid life crisis

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  • DominicDominic Frets: 16014
    I think it depends if you have children and how many..
    ie ;You want to provide as much as possible for them 
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  • fastonebazfastonebaz Frets: 4065
    nothing to add to this thread apart from my name. sorry :)
    @midlifecrisis ;I was hoping you'd have all the answers. 
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  • fastonebazfastonebaz Frets: 4065
    This thread is really interesting.  Some great experiences being shared.  Unanimously in favour of improving the work life balance as soon as possible vs slaving away until the bitter end.  

    Guess my dream job would be editing videos,  playing guitar and not having to talk much, all whilst earning enough to pay off the mortgage,  put the kids through uni and go on decent holidays. 

    Dream on......
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  • octatonicoctatonic Frets: 33725
    Guess my dream job would be editing videos,  playing guitar and not having to talk much, all whilst earning enough to pay off the mortgage,  put the kids through uni and go on decent holidays. 

    This describes most of my 'contribution' to the planet, although for guitar also add on 'bass, drums, piano and synthesiser'.
    I'm also getting into filming (corporate stuff, I'm not making feature films or anything)- I'm on my first independent video shoot in India in 3 weeks which will be exciting.

    I don't have kids though.
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  • stratman3142stratman3142 Frets: 2177
    edited January 2019
    This thread is really interesting.  Some great experiences being shared.  Unanimously in favour of improving the work life balance as soon as possible vs slaving away until the bitter end.  


    OK. In the interests of balance

    Maybe those that stuck it out (like me) are embarrassed to admit it because it doesn't sound very cool. There were many many times when I thought about it, but things went in the opposite direction. In the early days I resisted promotion and was very happy designing antennas. But then I got married, had two daughters, got divorced, had maintenance payments, got married again, acquired a stepson etc etc and there were always bills to pay. So the upwards spiral of technical management roles started, taking on increasing levels of responsibility. At least I could take early retirement a couple of years ago at 61.

    It's worth thinking about whether there's anything you can do to improve the situation in your current job. I came to the realisation that a lot of the pressure I was feeling was actually being generated in my own head and not from external sources, plus I had to learn to get a lot better at delegating and not feeling personally responsible for everything. Being able to switch off and partition work and home life is also important.

    Now I'm retired I actually miss the technical aspects of the work I used to do. Being honest I have far more natural ability at engineering and mathematics than music, so I was in the right profession even though I might have dreamed of other things.

    It's not a competition.
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  • scrumhalfscrumhalf Frets: 11262
    As I hurtled towards my 40th I had a senor finance role for a very large privately owned property group. I also never used to unwind before about 4pm on a Sunday. Crisis? Probably.

    I walked.

    In the intervening 17 years (how the fuck did it get to be that long?) I've done a lot of consultancy work and a lot of travelling. My life has become periods of often intense (but very well paid) activity punctuated by weeks/months seeing the world.

    It's been fantastic. I've been to places which the younger me would have thought impossible, impractical or just downright stupid. And much of it comes down to reading the next sentence, and the profound effect it had on my thinking.

    Nobody ever lay on their deathbed and said "I should have spent more time in the office".
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  • p90foolp90fool Frets: 31370
    Wis'd @stratman3142 , even though my life took the opposite turn to yours. You're absolutely right about a lot of the stress and pressure from work being internal - whatever you do it's helpful sometimes to take a step back and quote your own job description to yourself.

    "I turn up, I do ------- (fill in the blank), I go home." 
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  • fastonebazfastonebaz Frets: 4065

    It's worth thinking about whether there's anything you can do to improve the situation in your current job. I came to the realisation that a lot of the pressure I was feeling was actually being generated in my own head and not from external sources, plus I had to learn to get a lot better at delegating and not feeling personally responsible for everything. Being able to switch off and partition work and home life is also important. 

     This is so accurate.  We could all take note of this. 
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  • EricTheWearyEricTheWeary Frets: 16255
    Anyone gone from a well paid job to a lesser paid job as part of a mid life crisis in a bid to regain some sanity and work life balance? 

    How'd that work out for you in the long run? 
    I managed to bypass this worry by never having a well paid job in the first place. 


    I do know someone who went from being a coroner to being an Ocado driver and he couldn't be happier. But the nice house was paid for by being a coroner, the driving job just keeps him in quinoa. 
    Tipton is a small fishing village in the borough of Sandwell. 
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  • quarkyquarky Frets: 2777
    edited January 2019
    I start my new job in a month (it was three months notice). I am taking a £20k+ pay cut but going from an (almost) 2hr commute, to being 15 minutes up the road, and hopefully a job that I will enjoy much more.

    I work in IT, and for the past 12/18 months, my "day job" has been looking after my career (learning new skills, and remembering what it is like to enjoy IT), as part of a roadmap to ensure that I can take the positions that I want, rather than where my career was heading (more management and end-user compute, which I didn't want really). The office job has become just a "side gig" to pay my bills, and give me the chance to try different things. I was still professional and committed (designing a deployment of  SCCM, O365, and Windows 10 to over 10k clients at over 300 sites), but it was no longer my #1 priority, I was. My ambition is to get back to "sexy" cloud stuff. To be honest, I expect to be earing more again in a few years than I was last year, but if I stay at the new job, that is fine too.

    If you can afford it, go for it. In terms of being able to afford it, you can almost certainly live on less than you think!
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  • ... plus I had to learn to get a lot better at delegating and not feeling personally responsible for everything.

    Essentially that statement is why I was crap at management, way too much of a control freak and didn’t like delegating to people I felt were less competent and less likely to deliver – unfortunately in most cases I was right, which only increased the stress levels.

    Thinking about it I quickly decided life was too short for that shite :)

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  • mrkbmrkb Frets: 6637
    How have people that have taken large pay cuts in new roles found the mindset change? I suspect it takes a strong determination to reasses how and what you spend your money on. 
    Karma......
    Ebay mark7777_1
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  • menamestommenamestom Frets: 4641

    Well I quite like the pressure of a busy job.  You can get as stressed as you let yourself, but you get something back as well.
    I like being busy, the busier I am the more I get done in life.  I'd like a bit more time but I'm the type of person that does fuck all when there's no pressure, so in a strange way a stressful job gets me up for it.

    Looking at friends that don't work so much, they are not necessarily having a better quality of life. It's not just about money it's about being valued and involved in something which requires confidence and decision making.  If I just gave up my job to work in a job that payed less with less responsibility I'd quite soon miss being in the action.

    Whevever I start non work projects with people who have much more time for themselves I get exasperated by their lack of focus, but if you want something doing ask a busy person as they say.

    Saying that, being laid back helps, I don't really care at work, do my best but don't care beyond that.






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  • Danny1969Danny1969 Frets: 10357
    mrkb said:
    How have people that have taken large pay cuts in new roles found the mindset change? I suspect it takes a strong determination to reasses how and what you spend your money on. 

    Reassessing what you spend your money on isn't really an issue when you don't really have much - if any spare money :)  ..... luckily the things I enjoy the most don't cost any money  ..... thinks like playing guitar and keys, sitting on the beach, cooking, the countryside, inventing little gadgets. My love of the pub is subsidised by gig'ing so that's not a problem. I do like travelling and that has to be saved up for but because we can travel off peak and out of season it's kind of cheaper anyway. Being self employed I can earn more money if need be but if there's no pressing urgency to do so and it's a sunny day I prefer to be sitting in the pool or on the beach with a cold beer. 

    Being self employed doing anything and a decent enough musician is generally a good mix because if normal work gets tight you can take more gigs and vice versa. Then there's always other revenue streams like teaching, creating and selling backing tracks, mixing live sound, recording, audio installations. I've got a lot of fingers in a lot of pies which is kind of reassuring in as much as I don't rely on any one thing to put food on the table. I also love the fact there's variety .... doing the same thing day in and day out would do my head in. 


    www.2020studios.co.uk 
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  • mattdavismattdavis Frets: 840
    Nobody ever lay on their deathbed and said "I should have spent more time in the office".

    This is the phrase that keeps coming to mind recently. I spend a lot of my time doing long hours, with quite poorly people and witnessing some tragic circumstances  - whilst having spectacularly failed to heed the lessons learned and adjust my own work/life balance, to the detriment of my wife and kids. 
    Im 41 now and have taken the decision to try to drop a day of clinical work, replacing it with some non clinical stuff that won’t be as well paid, but should provide a bit of a breather as well as continue to contribute to our local health services.  I’ve been reflecting why I’ve taken so long to get to this decision  and I think it’s because it’s so counter intuitive to what was my younger self. 20s and 30s felt like they were dominated by trying to get some money to afford a home, then provide for my kids and wife. So to consciously decide to earn less felt like a crazy decision.  
    I think it’s taken a growing sense of confidence in my own decision making to properly believe that what my family need from me  is time, support and love more than cash! The most fun memories of recent years have never involved posh holidays or expensive meals. They’ve been impromptu football games in the park, hand made birthday cards from the wife, random trips out and seeing my kids grow and develop into people I am so proud of. 
    If you’ve got a strong inner voice suggesting you need a change, don’t ignore it. It may need some planning and thought, but it means something, and needs to be listened to.
    cheers 
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  • p90foolp90fool Frets: 31370

     It's not just about money it's about being valued and involved in something which requires confidence and decision making.  If I just gave up my job to work in a job that payed less with less responsibility I'd quite soon miss being in the action.


    That's what my band is for, and you're right I'd probably miss being a decision maker at work if I didn't have that. 
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  • JAYJOJAYJO Frets: 1526
    I do 44hrs a week. If i could do more i would. After getting my arse kicked by a 2 and 8 year old at the weekend i cant get to work quick enough.
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  • It's not just about money it's about being valued and involved in something which requires confidence and decision making.  If I just gave up my job to work in a job that payed less with less responsibility I'd quite soon miss being in the action.

    Whevever I start non work projects with people who have much more time for themselves I get exasperated by their lack of focus, but if you want something doing ask a busy person as they say.
    I think for me the problem is when you're expected to bring value to the table and do the decision making, but have zero support to actually make any decisions and the decisions you want to make are pushed back on by everyone around you, even though they don't know what the hell they are talking about. But in the end you end up doing what they want to do anyway, and all you efforts were worthless.

    So you're obviously not valued, obviously not making decisions, and are just running around pretending to be something you're not because the business has told you that you're a round peg when you're actually a square one. And the hole is round of course.

    Bye!

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  • munckeemunckee Frets: 12255


     It's not just about money it's about being valued and involved in something which requires confidence and decision making.  If I just gave up my job to work in a job that payed less with less responsibility I'd quite soon miss being in the action.



    This is what I always think when I think it would be great to chuck it in and work in a book shop or guitar shop or something.  I wish I had trained at something like forestry or something but insurance has paid the bills and with an autistic son without any real prospect of independence insurance is where I am staying I think.
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  • I've just had my 1 year anniversary of my major career change, Went from a job where I was responsible for a team of staff, managing a whole facility, in charge of budgets/payroll/contracting/sales etc to a job where I turn up, do my shift, manage zero people, and go home and largely forget about work the moment I log out.

    The previous job involved me being at work 5-6 days per week (occasionally 7) and working from home on the laptop doing spreadsheets and whatnot every single evening. I was also expected to be available on my phone at any time of day should a member of staff need me or some kind of crisis arise.

    I now work either 3 or 4 days per week (37.5hrs per week, either in 9.5hr or 12.5hr shifts) and spend the rest of the time doing whatever the hell I want. Never touching an excel spreadsheet or work email outside of work, never speaking to any colleagues outside of work (aside from non-work-related social banter). 

    I get less money per month but just cut cloth accordingly. I haven't regretted my decision for the even the smallest fraction of a second. Life's too precious to spend your life wasting away in a job you hate.
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