I sometimes find myself listening to someone gripe about their job.
Most just had a rough day or week.
Some, however, truly hate their career.
These folks can end up mostly hating life.
Their waking hours are eaten up by soul-crushing disdain for their circumstance, yet the cost in time and effort to change careers keeps them in this miserable cycle of collecting a paycheck and hating every minute of what they do to earn it.
My son Timothy wasn’t quite to that point at his last place of employment, but he didn’t like the gig.
He’s an auto tech, and his first job out of school was at a dealership in Pittsburgh’s North Hills.
Each day he’d go work at a shop that was not well run, and more and more he wondered if his career choice was a mistake.
Of course, his only experience was at that shop.
Eventually one of his co-workers got a job at a clean, professional, well-run shop south of Pittsburgh, and reached out to Tim to share his amazement at the difference.
Tim applied for work there, and his level of career satisfaction since he switched dealerships has skyrocketed.
I know a doctor who has hated their job for more than a decade, and because of that, they’ve made some bad diagnoses, missed signs of ailments in patients and seen their ratings go down — which further makes them hate their gig.
But it pays well. And it took over a decade of scholastic investment to get there.
My suggestion that they change careers — or make a change in specialty or department — was met with resignation to a couple more decades of hating every day.
That’s sad.
We get one run on this spinning rock, and finding the prospect of change too daunting to alleviate abject misery that results from a life choice is like a prison sentence.
It’s humbling to admit you made a mistake, but that might be the easiest part of major life change for most.
A true change in course can loom over a person like a sheer cliff they’d need to climb to get out of their present place.
If education is needed, how does that work? Work all day, then night school?
Going back to school would defer student loans, but taking new loans means both sets will be waiting when the schooling is done.
If one has a family, would change work for them?
If your job is in an area where most gigs are in the field one ended up hating, does relocation follow?
How does that work? Sell the house, pull up stakes and go? Kids yanked from school, friends left behind?
All of these considerations and more come into play, and for many it’s too much.
They resign themselves to hating each work day, and, usually their loved ones are sentenced to dealing with the most miserable version of them.
Some, however, take the leap.
They go through the whole process, push through the uncertainty and find a better lot in life.
It’s costly in so many ways, but for them and their loved ones, it’s a breath of fresh air.
Mom’s not angry and agitated every day when she gets home from the office, and Dad’s not walking on eggshells.
Their marriage seems more joy-filled, and that makes sense. Loving others well is almost impossible when you don’t love yourself – and career misery is enough to really ding up one’s capacity to love oneself.
A change like that means the whole family is going through change and sacrifice, and in the interim, it might add stress and frustrations.
Facing the reality that years ahead of slogging through misery because of a choice that didn’t turn out as planned may necessitate bold moves to ensure that misery isn’t a life sentence can embolden one to take the leap.
For others, it’s too much, too daunting, too costly.
For them, I hope the future costs of not making the change aren’t as costly as change would have been.
But it may well be.
Misery in long-term circumstances isn’t something humans hide well from those around them.
The spouse will feel the effects, wearing them down. The kids will see through the fake smiles and note that Dad’s never really doing so well.
The doctor I mentioned earlier finally did decide to add some further education and get into a parallel medical field. That took things getting bad enough that the cost of change was finally less than the cost of staying.
I’m praying this new role will be good for them. If it is, I know their loved ones and colleagues will enjoy the fruits along with the doctor.
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