Life planning

[azziria]

Had a very serious conversation with DH at the weekend about how I feel about life, my job, my priorities, and what I/we need to do about it all.



At the moment I’m feeling very uninspired by my job. For about 6 months up to February of this year I was handling a job for a client who expected the impossible and got nasty when we couldn’t deliver. She was also the sort of person who you could do something fantastic and superhuman for, and she would never say thank you and would just focus on some tiny thing that wasn’t quite perfect. All of this got me really down, and I don’t think I’ve really recovered from it. I work for a good boss, and with nice colleagues (which counts for an awful lot) but, at the end of the day, I’m currently not doing the job justice because I have no enthusiasm any more. And that’s not really fair to the company or to myself.

I’ve also gone too far down the project management route, and I’m not really getting the chance to exploit my creative side. When I first started in this line of work, I not only wrote stuff, I also got to work very closely with the design studio figuring out how it should look, and how to make it work best. I love that sort of thing, and get real satisfaction out of seeing the finished product. But my current boss is a designer himself, so the design stuff is pretty much right out of my hands. (In fact there have been occasions when he’s gone ahead and briefed for designs for one of my documents without even telling me, and the first thing I’ve known about it is when the designer has sent me the designs for my comments.) So at the moment I’m not doing much writing or working with the studio/web designers, and I’m doing too much organising and fire-fighting, which I’m not enjoying without the balance of the creative stuff.

I have a significant birthday coming up at Christmas, and I’m realising that life is too short to be sitting in an office clock-watching and wishing I were somewhere else. I also feel that I’m spending too much time commuting and not enough time with my kids, who are at a very precious and lovely age right now. DS in particular needs some more input from me right now, since he started school; although we have a good after school club, which he likes, it makes it a very long day by the time I pick him up at 18.00. He would also love to be able to have a friend home to tea after school occasionally, which at the moment just isn’t possible (and I want him to have the strong friendships I didn’t have when I was a child). (I’m less concerned about DD at the moment; she’s still at the lovely day nursery that DS went to too, and she seems fine - but she’ll start school next year, and then we’ll have the same sort of concerns with her, I’m sure.)


The upshot of our conversation is that DH is totally supportive of me making some big changes in my/our lives. I’m thinking about doing some courses, maybe in design/web programming/graphics etc programmes on the computer - I don’t know yet, I need to look into it. I feel kind of excited and kind of nervous about all this, but I’m facing the fact that at the moment I am not happy with the way things are, and something has to change. So watch this space!

Comments

[melancthe.livejournal.com]

Thanks for a really interesting post. I think you're lucky to have a DH who's so supportive and so caring.

There's nothing worse than feeling that you're not doing the job justice, and feeling like a clock-watcher. It's a brave decision you're taking - I'm starting to feel quite inspired. :)

[aguynamedrick.livejournal.com]

I'd like to do more creative and less management, but in the US, it seams like they are getting rid of the creative, get work done people and moving that over seas. I'm sure I'd have to go if I was doing actual software design. I have a lot of experience. Just the type of person they want to replace with someone in an other country who has 3 years experence that's probably in the area they are working.