Anyone broken free from professional life? Warning: rant

Well, yes, that too.

I have sort of done this...

Was working in finance / strategy at a charity in London and had been living in town for 10 years. Although the job sounds fancy, it wasn't City pay (charities don't pay big); i was on a comfortable-ish income for a modest lifestyle that basically just funded my riding. I have no family or girlfriend to look after. Although the job wasn't too stressful, I was so bored of it and demotivated, and had grown to hate London.

So 6 months ago, I binned the job and moved out to Henley on Thames, where I had a good group of mates. The plan was to work as much as possible at tri shop and chiropractors Athlete Service, and do some freelance writing and just see what happens.

Turns out i'm not getting enough work at Athlete Service to tide me over, but have got bits of pieces of other work to supplement it, and the writing portfolio / exposure is growing. My income is pathetic and I have to be very careful. it can be pretty stressful and I'm definitely not looking forward to the renewal of my car insurance (can't go without the car unfortunately)...

However, I way prefer my life in general. I have flexibility and freedom, and all the work i do is really interesting. Given that nearly all my work is based in the cycling industry I get a fair bit of kit / components / events etc at a good rate, which is a massive blessing.

It may not be a long-term solution for if i ever pull my finger out and get a serious girlfriend, but for now, i'm pretty happy with it, and the businesses i'm working with are young, growing and ambitious, so the seeds are there.

That's me.

edit - oh and leaving london instantly makes everything 10000 x better.

I tried six months running bike tours abroad. It was good at first but I soon realised that for just a little capitol investment (hire bikes, tool kit, van) I could do it myself for a lot less grief and more $$$. It's seasonal and I don't get any income from it October to Feb but it's a quantum leap from the drudgery of a fairly stable professional life I had in the UK before.

Not for the faint hearted though, as I went through a lot of cash in the first year (mainly my own) but it's paid out good style now.

Once upon a time I wanted to try to move abroad and become a foreign correspondent type thing. Apart from the fact that I was increasingly aware that most of the people reporting on 'foreign' countries were locals who spoke impeccable English and would know more than I could ever learn about their home countries, there was the experience of working with a lovely German man whose name was the German version of mine and around ten years older than me. He'd been working across the world as a journalist, knew lots about everything - in particular Iraq, where he'd lived for a number of years among the Marsh Arabs and written a PhD about them - and was utterly broke. He was stringing stuff about Iraq for the tiny publication I worked for because we paid okay, but his main income was working for German TV news. Every now and again we'd have a pint and he'd tell me how he hated doing all this crap tabloid TV news ("Diana's fucking memorial, jah? Diana's fucking memorial.") but he was pushing 40, didn't have enough money to buy his own place and had convinced himself he'd never find a nice lady and settle down unless he was a man of at least moderate means. Hence doing the tabloid work he hated.

I was labouring to clear a hell of a lot of student debts around the same time, so the combination of the fact that parachuting white men (sometimes women) into foreign countries to indulge some neocolonial itches was not the future of journalism, and the impression this guy made on me, both put me off the idea.

Now I have the feeling that I've spent most of my 20s and 30s in an office instead of exploring and learning and enjoying life a little. I'm solvent but similarly jaded and miserable and thinking maybe if I'd gone the other route I'd be poorer but more balanced, feel more fulfilled, and would have met someone nice and settled down instead of having an overly intense relationship with whatever I'm working on at a given point in time.

Hey ho.

that's ace/ are you based overseas now or still in the uk? and what's your company called?

How many people can you hire from this thread (i call first dibs)?

Now I have the feeling that I've spent most of my 20s and 30s in an office instead of exploring and learning and enjoying life a little.

I have this problem, too, however in my late 30s I have a truck of options.

I just can't take the right ones

It's in Spain, but the business model and market is getting crowded now. Every year there is more and more (relatively effective) competition.

There's still scope to get new clients from Holland and Germany but I'll have to get fairly fluent in both languages pretty soon. I'm keeping it tight and small, because mainly I prefer not to work long hours \too hard cos of new family commitments etc.

It means that I'd take a massive paycut if I left - unless I did a similar job at a competitor, but then I would lose my shares in the current company (I'm not sure moving sideways would be healthy anyway). So if I leave it has to be to do something that I'm willing to take the paycut for.

Snap. First tranche of shares vest in August, four years to full allocation.

I love cooking and like 50% of the Italians abroad I'd like to turn that into a profession someday (catering? food stall? gastro pub?), but would hate to see that becoming something that ties me down and suffocates me, the same way my current job is doing now. To the point that I might not even ever try.

Are you planning to stop off anywhere and work for a while? If you want to be in the food biz my advice would be to get experience working in a busy restaurant kitchen, at any or many levels. You'll either love the environment, learn a lot and thrive on the buzz of service or realise that the reality is far from what you imagined and that maybe it's not for you. Running your own place obviously brings with it a lot of additional responsibilities/pressures too.

I'm certainly not trying to put you off and many great chefs have turned their favourite thing to do at the weekend in to a career, but better to avail yourself of as much info as possible before making any big decisions!

Journalism is so very different now what with the fast, cheap modern technology and social media. In a sense, we're all reporting all the time, from our phones. How much of it is true is another matter.

If you have managed to save up a little, why not go traveling for a few months? I know loads of people (me included) who had a better time exploring new places in their late 20s and 30s than in their on-a-shoestring gap years.

@giofox88 - A former colleague quit the day job to spend a couple of years training as a chef, then spent a year working in the kitchen a very posh hotel, and then scraped together the funds to buy and refurbish a beaten-up greasy spoon on Well St. By all accounts Well St Kitchen seems to be doing pretty well, and he's really happy with it. Although I've not seen him in a long time given the hours he works - I should go there more often.

Yeah, I've been thinking about that. Sabbaticals are hard where I work. But I've been trying to travel more as my current role gives me a little more flexibility about when I can take holiday. I think there's some other stuff I need to address before I'll get the most out of it, but I've a couple of ideas. One of which is to spend time in places where they've just discovered or are about to discover hydrocarbons, before they've developed them - it'd be really interesting to chronicle how they change as a result of the resources, and might remind me why I got into writing about the energy industry in the first place. I really love well-researched thought-provoking long-form writing, which nobody pays for but is such an utter joy to read. Fortunately I have something of an excuse to do this because of the day job, so maybe that's a way to make it work.

I'll quieten up a bit now, don't want to take over the thread. Thanks all though, it's really thought-provoking.

Kitchen work is hard graft, long hours, often thankless... BUT. If you really love it, and you can jump out of bed in the morning and think 'Yes, this is it. This is what I've always wanted to do', then any amount of anxiety or fear or hard work won't stop you doing it. Enthusiasm, pardon the cliché is totally infectious, in my opinion 80% of what makes a business work. If you're in a rut with a job you hate, you're only treading water to pay the bills.

My advice is get out while you can, even if you fuck it up, you'll have the confidence to try again. I tried a few career slides till I got to this one, and although I probably went through half my savings in the first year, I've got that back ten fold since.

So you need to ask yourself one question: do you want to crawl out of bed in the morning to something that diminishes you as a human being, or jump out of bed with a pulse and a sense of adventure every day?

I'm two years into a slight career tangent into PR from national newspapers. Foreign correspondent was always tempting but it's competitive and the number of correspondents had plummeted in recent years.

Thanks for sharing the point of view.

I did work 3 summers in two different kitchens, and 7 years in a smaller kitchen as a pizza baker. So I had a glimpse at it, some aspects I liked, some I hated (like working when everyone else isn't and vice versa, hence not seeing friends as much - @h2o )

That's why I need to find an alternative that would still focus on what I like, but having it more manageable.

I don't want to make millions, become famous or be a renowned chef, nor open a chain of restaurants. I want something small, that keeps me focused on doing what I like rather than just becoming a manager, that's why i was talking about catering/food stall kind of thing. Most certainly not in London or any other place that is make it or break it.

Not sure I explained myself.

This thread is great.

In my frugal period I took a close look at where money was flowing out. Obvious items like car went immediately. Sky. Gym membership which I hardly ever used. Too many coffees. Shopping in waitrose for veg. (I lived next to a proper market FFS.) Beer in trendy pubs. I switched to shopping only in the sales. Even moved Xmas to January and halved the cost. Of everything! Started browsing and buying in charity shops. Disconnected TV altogether and just watch movies from charity shops. (I'm finally catching up on all those missed films.) What a lovely moment when the TV license checker knocked on the door! His face. Brilliant. Saved a small fortune.

When I had a proper job a small part of it was a weekly column in a local paper. I wrote it for 22 years and one day they changed the format of the paper, and no longer wanted my copy. I stopped writing altogether. It was dead easy when I was in the habit, 400 words took no more than 20 minutes to write. I was very depressed about the way the paper treated me, I was actually the longest serving contributor and had seen off three editors in my time there.
I found out I had got a bit of a following only really after I stopped doing it.
One day a year ago I was persuaded to write something. I found it a real struggle to get going, and it was really faltering, but I was cajoled until I had completed what I set out to do.
The reason for sharing this here now is I have just seen the cover and in a month I will have published a fucking book.
The writing bug has come flooding back, and I have a manuscript for the second and more ambitious book already written. That could only have happened because of changing my lifestyle. I can now sit and think. It is a real luxury, just sitting, thinking and suddenly having a few words to put down. Then doing it again. Cycling is a great place to do some of that thinking, and I find myself riding for no other reason than to create another page.

Tell us more about this fucking book.

I love this thread

Your story sounds great from an outsider point of view!

Actually it is just a book, not a book about fucking. And it is a pretentious and pretty irrelevant thing. If it appeared on here it would likely get ripped to shreds and probably deservedly. I am just amazed I have actually done it though. My mum is going to be thrilled too!

@adroit

pretentious and pretty irrelevant

We're your target audience..!

Congrats anyway, sounds rad. You should post a note on here when it comes out.

Awesome thread, subscribed.