The Misery of a Day Job

People are quitting their jobs left and right. We're in the Great Resignation.

Americans are tired of the corporate structure, tired of bosses demanding their time and attention, dictating what to do for 8-12 hours at a time, and then stealing credit when it benefits them.

I make $100,000 annually and I’m miserable.

It's a good salary in North Carolina where the cost of living isn’t too high and the tax rates are decent. Yes, inflation is higher than we’ve seen it in a long time, but my salary is still nothing to laugh about.

Most people would be envious that a 34 year old woman makes that much, especially working for the government where the work is “low stress” and the benefits are good. I’ll agree with that last bit, the benefits are good. But for my line of work, even in a government setting, the stress is still high.

I work in finance. Working in finance, and any industry that involves a high level of knowledge and skill, seems to always bring a certain level of stress. It's expected, yet it's still dissapointing.

For some reason, people expect financial work to be easy or not take long at all to digest and produce work products. Probably because the people managing the financial folks have never actually done this type of work themselves, they just awe at our magical spreadsheets and excel wizardry. It’s a craft – it takes time.

I digress.

But I am still miserable. My time is swallowed up by commuting to and from work and then sitting there, producing work as quickly as I can, for 8 - 10 hours at a time. I want so much to spend more time with my kids, more time writing, more time taking care of my body - exercising and making and eating good food. More time traveling. And call me crazy, but more time relaxing.

It’s constant.

I want to quit, and I also want to breath.

Quitting now, especially during a busy time period, equates to letting the team down in my mind. Also, going back to my original point, $100,000 is alot of money. It represents some sort of identity to me. It means I can be a high earner. It took me awhile to get here too. It’s an unusual salary for a government worker – we’re not exactly known for making the big bucks.

How do I change my identity to be more in line with an entrepreneur? How do I walk away and not feel like I'm letting someone down? How do I align the majority of my waking hours with what I really want to do in life?

What do I really want to do, you ask?

What I really want to do is to write and own my own business. What I really want to do is to create things that matter - not make other people rich or continue a cycle of work that literally never ends and never changes much of anything.

I want to make an impact. But I also want to feed my family.

I'm starting my quest to figure it out -- I will get out of this misery. I will quit my day job to do something I love.