So what's next?
If there's one thing 17 year old me and current 31 year old me have in common, it's not knowing what to do with our lives. When I was in high school I was more concerned with learning how to play drums, hanging out with my friends and playing Gears of War 3 than thinking about where I wanted to go to college or what I wanted to do for a career. It's a hard choice for anyone to make at that age, but I've always kind of struggled at visualizing the future for myself for anything beyond a year or so anyway.
The issue with that is if you end up just coasting by, making decisions for yourself that you're not really thinking about, you can end up deeply unhappy. And that's what happened to me!
I graduated from a college I didn't fit in at with a degree in marketing - a field that I would grow to hate. My thoughts back then were that I wanted to work in some sort of creative field that had job security, which in my mind was advertising. Turns out advertising is neither creative nor has good job security.
I was let go from the agency job I had worked at for over 5 years this week. It was complicated - the job itself had made me so miserable to the point where it was affecting my mental and physical health and I ended up checking out. So I can't really say that I'm mad about it, just mostly mad that it wasn't on my terms.
Now here I am, back at square one. I have been working in marketing or advertising in some way since I graduated college a decade ago. I was never really happy at any of the jobs I was at, but this was the field I picked so I had to stick with it. And stick with it I did, at the expense of my personal well-being.
I have always struggled with depression and both the job and the effects of working it during and post pandemic really had me down worse than usual and it took way too long to realize. Working remote, isolated all day, not speaking to anyone but asking for things or being asked for things all hours of the day just drains you. Even when we started going into the office again, my team was full remote anyway so I knew maybe one or two people there and I'd just sit at a desk with headphones on like everyone else. And not to mention the never-ending stress of the workload. I just wasn't cut out for it, and it was affecting me bad.
So now that I'm unemployed again for the first time in a decade I kind of expected to be relieved. And I am for sure (and feel much less stressed out during the day) yet I can't find myself able to relax fully - which honestly is kind of what I really need right now! Of course my brain is thinking about every bad possible scenario that could happen in the next few weeks and months - what if I can't find a job, what if I run out of money? I think I'll end up being fine; I have savings, severance and unemployment to collect and I have significantly more (and better!) experience on my resume that I did for my last job hunt. It's just the classic conundrum of "do I take another agency job recruiters are already hitting me up for at the expense of my mental health again for a quick buck" or "do I really dig in and think about what makes me happy and get a job that won't make me miserable even if its harder to land?"
But I think it's time for a career change no matter how hard or scary it can be to do something different. It was easy for me to stay at my soul-crushing agency job because I knew how to do it and you get used to the routine, even if the routine is slowly killing you. I'm already finding non-profit jobs and different positions at places like museums near me that seem way more interesting than what I was doing and actually seem feasible for me to jump on.
I have a long road ahead of self-reflection but I think it'll end up well for me. Hopefully I can get out of corporate America for a bit and find something that makes me want to get out of bed every morning. And if I do get recruited for another agency job for the money, hopefully it'll be more tolerable.
And maybe it's time to try out antidepressants for the first time. LOL