| The travel thing is definitely something I wish I could do more of, so if your current employer enables that, that’s a big plus for your mental health. Do you think your current employer would respond well to an honest discussion about how to make the work you do more, I dunno, exciting? Envigorating? Less stressful? More meaningful? Less contact hours? Some managers would respond well to that. Others, not so much. Dare I say it, it may also be worth talking to your partner? That’s definitely something I wish I’d done way sooner when I was seriously depressed. My partner has been so understanding and helped greatly get me back to a state where I was getting more joy out of life. For me, it was always this fear of feeling like a failure, something that is definitely intensified by having 2 people depend on you as much as a mother and child do. If they love you, they will really want to help you and you’d be crazy not to ask for their advice at least. Worth noting that the HR department are NOT the ones to be discussing this with: they work for the company, not for you. It sounds harsh, but NEVER trust HR, no matter how nice they seem most of the time. > the classic midlife crisis feeling that I haven't accomplished anything Totally frivolous aside, the Germans have a word for that: “Torschlußpanik". > From Tor + Schluss + Panik, literally “gate-shut panic”. For safety reasons city gates used to be shut at nightfall (Torschluss, from Tor + Schluss), leaving latecomers no other choice than to stay outside, thereby exposing them to various dangers. A German once told me “yeah, but in Germany that usually hits people in their 20s”. LOL. |
And my employer has been amazing, truly amazing. They basically gave me free reign to find projects on my own that could benefit the company.
No I'm afraid I'm stuck at stagnation and if I don't find another remote-only job that allows me the freedom of work/life balance I've become accustomed to I will just have to suck it up and do some effin work. Which is exactly what I've been doing lately.
Using all the known techniques, pomodoro, timeblocking, dividing tasks up into smaller components, I have managed to do some work lately and it feels good.