Anyone broken free from professional life? Warning: rant

Yeah this thread has been really interesting for me, particularly with people talking about quality of life (tired of unpaid late nights) but the thing is I am already in my "dream job" (I didn't aim for it, but I really dig it). However the whole education sector is pretty fucked these days, not so bad as the NHS but still...
Maybe I will be fine in a couple months and just under pressure atm.

I think you have hit the Nail on the head there.
I've always told my friends and anyone that asks that to know what you want first you must know who you are. Long ago I figured out that I'm not an office type or city type, a few years back I was enticed back down to London by a new GF and started working as a contract welder and was eventually offered a position as a workshop manager ( I found out I'm not really a people person either). I hated it driving round that M25 to Watford every morning frequently losing my patience with people who would much rather be on their phone than doing any meaning full work. I came to an agreement with my bosses they gave me a months pay and I left and moved back to Cumbria (the new GF didn't work out either) Now I'm a kept man whose job it is to ferry my now wife to her job as she works away from home.
It wasn't easy at first being used to the hamster wheel for 30+ years and then finding you have no incentive to get up in the morning, I noticed I was suffering abit from depression I was finding no enjoyment messing around with my bikes so I started to ride a lot more and have since joined the CTC. My life now transpires to volunteering at a community workshop and doing odd jobs to fulfil my days I will never be rich or have a pension but I'm happy I know who I am and what makes me tick.

A great thread and thanks all for sharing

I have to say this thread has been amazing to read through. much positivity. such wow.

I typed out a long spiel about my current situation and then deleted it. I am financially comfortable and beginning to save for a deposit for a place after 17 years of being broke, living month to month and paying for previous bad life decisions. My job 5 months ago was stagnated after 7 years and I wasn't enjoying it. I finally got a job in the parent comp[any of the one I was in and although its still financial services I went from wealth management finance team to bank finance team. It made a big difference for me. I am mostly out of my comfort zone about 70% of the day and learning all the time. My employer is swedish and both my GF and I wanted to move there even before my old company were bought out. So plans are afoot and things are moving.

Switching to a new department/area within the same company has given me a big kick of enthusiasm for what I do.

@Invent have you considered staying in the medical profession but switching to something like training? training the next generation? or even just getting into medical education as a whole? It could still provide the helping others part but with generally less life and death stress. this is my partners field and she comes home excited every day babbling about this stuff all the time.

That last bit is something that occurred to me but I forgot to mention. A friend works in mental health and have spent many years on the front line, working in wards. She's found it very rewarding but had basically become ground down by the stress coupled with constant stripping back of funding etc.
She recently got recommended for a lecturing position which she went for. She's now visibly happier as she's in the field she trained in, but basically has shed all the crap that was making her unhappy and ill. Not an escape from professional life as such, more of a 'pivot' :-)

Sorry, I seem incapable of doing short posts!

I think it's still hard (in the fukt up post Cameron/Osborne/Brexit disaster area that currently exists) to climb down from the status and income reward a 'good job' can give you, however dull, tiring or soul destroying it may be. For some it's just a fence too high to see over the other side.

I've a pal in southern Spain spent 15 years in front of screens sorting security for city banks. It left him ill, clinically depressed and he even jacked in cycling! (The shame, the shame...) He came here in 2005 with pretty much all his savings and did odd jobs for a few years, repairing bikes, buying and selling bikes and eventually married and settled here. I've known the guy for 25 years and I've never seen him so tangibly happy. He's got a small painting and decorating business now and has a lot of English speaking clients who love his work. He probably makes 25% of what he did in the City but that means jack to him in 2017.

Anyone thinking of coming to Spain to live and work, just do it! The quality of (and pace) of life is fantastic. The food is easily as good as in France, the weather is stunning (this is the first real day of rain in 75 days of straight sunshine!) and it's relatively cheap to live here. Barcelona is cool but the city centre is worse than London for busy/parking but in the suburbs like Badalona there's a proper thriving young tech/artist community, mostly English speaking and you have the metro system if you need to travel into town. Rentals there can be 2-400 euro a month in a shared flat. English speaking/part bilingual in anything is highly valued here. And a Ryanair flight Barca or back home is usually less than 50 Euros a hop... You can go home for the weekend, but you'll soon not want to ;)

I think this is a good counterpoint to other posts - you don't always need a complete change of direction (and accompanying risk, upheaval) to make a huge difference in your life, and it's worth working out if there's a way to use existing experience in a different job in broadly the same area or industry.

Even moving to a different department may give you e.g. a line manager with a very different outlook, and gives you a good chance at dropping elements of your job which frustrate (like that tedious thing you have to do every Friday which takes much longer than anyone realises)

Sure there might be a pay or responsibility cut, but in the long term you may be building more comprehensive experience.

Some interesting stories here, and pleased to know I'm not the only one unsatisfied in their current situation.

A few years ago I moved to South Australia with my GF at the time. In the process gave up working in a 'proper job', which I was sick of, and worked as a bike messenger. Riding around in the sun AND RAIN was sweet (most of the time). Spent my time on standby thinking about setting up my own business/store/cafe. Actually started a very small 'business' (if you can call it that) designing t-shirts for a while, which sold in bike stores and online. Then switched to temping for different local government departments to try and start a 'career'. Spent my time thinking about a business/store/cafe. Due to breaking up with the GF, moved back to London.

When I got back I slipped straight back into a similar role to what I had left about 3 years previously. Thought about retraining, partly to get a skill needed to get back to Oz. Partly to set up my own business. Decided it would cost too much and take too long. That was 5 years ago. I'm still in the same job...thinking about setting up my own business/store/cafe.

The 2 main reasons I haven't taken the leap are 1) As soon as I think about how much it would cost, and how I could pay rent while retraining or setting something up. 2) The fear. Taking a leap of faith and scared it'll go wrong...and 3) More importantly, the idea keeps changing.

I feel like my ideas of what I picturing it being are gradually becoming more comprehensive. And started looking at how to go about creating a start-up. But the fear, although lessening, is still there. Esp with regards to financially.

I realise this sounds very vague, but the idea is essentially a store. I picture it being bricks and mortar, but considering online, at least to begin with (due to The Fear).

You'll always have the fear - after seven years as a freelancer, I still get the fear - so in the end, you just have to accept that the fear will always be there and get on with things.

Last time I was on the forum properly, I'd just been made redundant, had ended a long-term relationship and was fighting my old employers in an Employment Tribunal. In the years that followed I did a ton of personal photography work, which culminated in me deciding at the last minute to join my best friend and sleep in the back of his van while shooting him riding bikes in the Alps. That got me working with Cyclist, who I've worked for over the past three years, as well as some other cool people. Last year I started writing as well, and had a piece in the Ride Journal, before I started working for Tinkoff, and then this season, doing PR for Sagan.

I earnt a really decent salary when I had my desk job - about four times as much as I do now - but I'm so, so much happier now, even during the quiet times when I'm panicking about the amount of work coming in. I miss not owning my own home, and hate that I can't afford to do the things I want to do, but what's the alternative? I'd be working more than 40hr weeks and I'd never be able to do anything else - 50 weeks a year so I can go on holiday for two weeks? Fuck that.

In the end, nobody gives a shit about you, so you may as well do something you love, or at least helps you pay the bills so you can do the things you do love more. Long time dead and everything...

Awesome
Fucking awesome

I don't want to piss on anyone's dreams here, but when I read people saying "i don't have a pension, but..." it worries me. There are only two alternatives to saving for retirement: 1) work until you die; and 2) live solely off state pension, which if you're currently young is likely to be sweet fuck all by time you retire. Obviously, it's pointless working a 40 year career in misery so you can have a comfortable retirement, but it's equally foolish to live in the moment and find yourself in abject poverty in later life.
Buzz Killington/

That isn't a counterpoint to breaking free of the grind btw. Just a note of caution.

That's pretty much the essence of taking a side step from a 'good job'. You can't live your life for other people, if you get the chance to do something you love, grab it.

It's a sobering thought to spend 50 weeks a year hating it, for two weeks in the sun. Or 40 years hard graft for a pension which might not even exist, or be so piss poor its not worth the grief at all.

I took the choice not to pay the bills and the mortgage and the student loan and take a chance out here. I'm not saying it was easy, there were a lot of hurdles and false starts, but as above - nobody living your life for you, you either take a chance or shut the fuck up complaining about how 'shit things are'. Unfortunately it can be ten years before 'how shit things are' becomes an existential threat, and by then you maybe missed the window of opportunity to get out from under.

Don't miss an opportunity.

Leap and the net will appear

I think the problem is that whether some people jump ship or not, they are still stuffed pension wise, unless they can put over £750 into a fund every month until they retire. So staying put and being unhappy means the stress of it all will probably kill you before you get to pension age. Much better to be happy and broke, even though being broke and retired stinks (I'm thinking about a couple of my mum's friends here).

The past and future do not exist. It is foolish to live anywhere but the moment you are present in, you can only be happy now. Most of these shared stories are based on "what if I ... ?" and there is no answer because your imagination creates your destiny

There is freedom
waiting for you
on the breezes
of the sky
and you ask
"what if I fall?"
oh but my darling
what if you fly

The problems are deeper, I do find Adam Curtis has a talent for scratching at it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtjfoEvsR9w

Don't play along pretending it is real. Whatever you want can be satisfied, for your reality is in your mind, the physical world is your fantasy. It is the most amazing mechanism, go get what you want.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dl6IOwqHog

The past certainly does exist and what I have learnt from the past is that so does the future.

Sorry, I meant in my opinion.

Presentism works for me, makes me happier. If Eternalism works for you that's great, we are all different so no one size fits all. When I was studying Physics I inherently used to think like that but I realised my anxieties were all attached to regret and despair about past and future respectively. When I began to think like a Presentist, most of my worries just disappeared.

Ok thanks - interesting.

But this Presentism seems like hard work .

My sister is in the same situation. A thankless job...but thank you really and I mean that. I've seen her motivated and then swiftly depressed over the current direction/situation of the education sector. You rock.

Don't work on/with bikes. You get sick of anything cycling after a few years and never end up riding enough for lack of motivation. It's time to get the fuck out. This thread gets my vote as one of the best this forum has ever produced.

Presentism 4 eva

I don't think it's necessary to say 'the past and future don't exist', when all that this really means is 'they are not the present'. Of course they exist, in the specific ways in which the past and future exist: the past as the cause of the present and the future as its effect. Both are modes of existence that don't require presence. Moreover, regret and despair are, of course, not the only feelings that can be evoked by either, and many much more positive feelings can be, as well. Denying the past and future because of worries about certain, perhaps prevalent, feelings is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The future may not exist, but if you don't have a pension you'll be fucked in a future present.

My retirement plan is to die early.

I know so many people locked into jobs/ professions they detest "because of my pension"
But as they are miserable now, they'll probably be miserable when they retire, just have a bit more money.

Probably an irrational fear