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There has got to be more to life than my job, it’s sucking the life out of me.
I feel that in my adult life the days, months, and years are going by so quickly and all I really remember is working, working, and working. In return, I have too many clients to manage and not enough time to do my job.
There are many reasons not to quit my job, I call these the golden handcuffs:
- Two weeks vacation (“too weak” vacation)
- Health insurance
- Semi-monthly paycheck
Perhaps my perception is skewed, but I thought a full-time job meant 40 to 45 hours a week. My job, the one I have now and the ones I’ve had before this job, is a full-time and a part-time job rolled into one. Since I’m salaried, my job doesn’t have a start and stop time, which means a typical week easily runs 65 hours a week. If I don’t work at least 5 hours on the weekend just to catch up, my life is hell the following week. Seriously, I’d take less of a salary if I could simply have less of a workload with a start and stop time.
I’ve attempted to speak up to my manager that the workload is too much. “I must set my boundaries” I say over and over in my head. Problem is, the other 12 people doing my job have the same workload with the same demands and they aren’t protesting.
But equally important, there are so many reasons I must quit this job:
1. I will have a work life balance. I’m not making a contribution to my community today because I simply don’t have the time.
2. I will no longer have to do business travel. I was told this job would be 10-15% travel; it really is more like 40%. I won’t miss the red eye flights, the delayed flights, the inclement weather keeping me from getting home, the broken seat in the rent-a-car, the fast food race, wondering which remote airport parking lot I parked my car this morning at 4am, etc.
3. I will work out regularly and make fitness a priority!
4. I will eat healthier foods which requires preparation
5. I will develop a social life and meet new friends as well as visit with some old ones
6. I will sell or rent my house. Even though I spend less than 25% of my salary on my living expenses, having this mortgage is tying me down.
7. I will continue driving my car until it dies.
8. I will take long vacations like the Europeans do!
9. I will no longer get sucked into the new marketing idea that senior management is making the workers implement.
10. I will take walks in the sunshine during the day. No more working in front of a computer 10+ hours a day.
There are two obstacles that I need to solve before quitting my job:
Health insurance: I’m angry that health insurance outside of working for corporate America is ridiculously expensive. I hate staying in a job “just for the benefits.” So either I need to go work for Starbucks 20 hours a week to get benefits or figure something else out.
Cash flow: I need to do some kind of work to have an income. As much as I love my One Paycheck at a Time website, the Google ads on the site only pays for the cost to get the website running.
Once I solve the health insurance and cash flow issues, only then can I seriously consider quitting my job. At least I’m debt free, this puts me in a much better position otherwise I would definitely be locked in. In the meantime, I’ll keep working for awhile.
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