I’m on the bus at 8am, it’s raining, it’s Monday morning. I look around; darkened faces bury themselves deep in their devices, seeking an escape from the week ahead. Beneath the wet coats, eyes are sunken, mouths downturned – people look glum. I face the window and watch more of the same trudge past as we stop at the lights. A slow, zombie-like procession seems to be emanating from the train station as suits and umbrellas struggle towards their high-rises – not a smile in sight.
I fidget in my too-tight shoes and uncomfortable office attire and think of a million other places I’d rather be. I ask myself the same question I ask every morning on the bus into work. Why are we doing this? Does it have to be this way?
For many years the answers that came back were always yes; I need the money, it’s what everyone else is doing, this is city life. If I want the house, the holidays, the car, then I need this job to pay for it.
They’d come on around 3pm on a Sunday – the blues. I’d start to realise the weekend was nearing a close, even though it felt like it had just started. They tended to last until Friday, but Monday morning was always the hardest part of the week.
Friday morning everyone seems to have more of a spring in their step. We’re dressed in jeans for casual Friday, the week is almost behind us, a less busy day ahead and the weekend in sight. We wait all week until Friday; we live for the weekend. But work is part of life; they are not separate.
Life doesn’t start when work stops. This is why it’s so important we enjoy our jobs. We spend so much time there it’s bound to impact everything from our mood to our health and ultimately our happiness. We can’t just wait for the weekend to live (and then only enjoy it until the Sunday-night blues kick in) or wait until retirement to live a life we dream of, free from a job we simply don’t enjoy.
For years we’ve been conditioned to think we have to work for someone else and have to earn more money to have a good life, gain more titles and status to be successful and valued. This is at odds with what the research is showing makes us happy – more time, family, love and making a difference in the world.
The bottom line is if we can find something that utilises our skill set, challenges us to learn and grow, aligns to our values and gives us a sense of purpose, we’ve cracked it. It won’t feel like work, but we will get paid for it.
I remember a career counsellor at school asking me if I’d ‘like to work in an office like my mum’ but it was more of a suggestion than a question. I suspect she had a list of girls’ jobs and boys’ jobs in front of her too.
We’re not taught this stuff at school, and society models a version of career success that revolves around status, titles and salary, not passion, purpose and happiness.
If I was going to do a job aligned to my strengths and passions, then I was probably going to become a professional soccer player, but as a girl in rural England, I was about 20 years too early! In fact, many of my passion jobs weren’t an option. There was a distinct line between work and passion, earning money and having fun, making a living and making a life.
So I worked my way through HR offices, industries and countries and gained experience and skills as I went, each time gaining promotions and more money. This was the prescribed ladder for career success.
There were bits of it I enjoyed, I guess, when I look back, but I found myself drifting to new jobs every two years or so because I got bored. The prospect of a change always filled me with the hope ‘this time it’ll be different’.
My dream job was always just around the corner, but the trouble was I was following the same recipe and expecting it to make me happier than it had done before. Each time I resigned I’d think, I’m going to try something new this time, I don’t think this is for me. But what else could I do? This was all I knew, this was what I’d trained for, and it was a ‘good’ job. So I’d fall back into the same roles, the same unhappiness and lack of fulfilment.
After all, it was my job, it wasn’t supposed to make me happy, that was what I did after 5.30pm. Its purpose was to earn me money so I could enjoy life and set up a good pension so I could retire at some very distant point in the future. It did earn me money, and it seemed to be the recipe everyone else was following, so who was I to question if we’d got it wrong?
I do remember doing a career survey at a careers day once. It was on a computer the size of my house, back in the days before we knew about algorithms, and I’m not sure what I did, but the answer was not what anyone was expecting. I answered the questions as Mum stood behind me, hoping it would spit out lawyer, doctor or similar. The lady in charge of this giant computer tentatively passed us the printout. Top choice, number one career option, based on my answers … fence erector.
Now, I’m not sure what algorithm was being used, but knowing my lack of passion for DIY and the lack of skills I have around anything in the garden, I’d say this was not terribly accurate. What courses would I take at A levels for this, and how would I get myself a job? Mum looked a little disappointed. I was mostly confused. I never went on to erect fences.
So how did I eventually join the dots and find a job I loved which also paid my bills? It was a long journey, and it started with the end. The end of my HR career and days in the corporate world.
One year prior I’d taken a promotion, and a year later, still unhappy in my work, was when I burned out. The impact on my health forced me to choose, and it was at that point I realised there was more to work than money and more money was not always better. So I quit, but this time, instead of saying, ‘I think I want to do something different,’ for the tenth time and then going straight back into what I knew, I was determined something had to change.
We often praise people for having a job, getting a job or progressing in their career. We don’t often praise them for quitting, especially if they’re not sure what they’re going to do next.
It’s a brave step to take, and often we’re not encouraged to be this brave. I remember a friend at the time telling me, as I walked away from my corporate career with the biggest organisation in the country, ‘You’ll never get another job like that, you know.’
Well, that was the point. I didn’t want another job like that.
Find out more about my story finding work I loved and that of many others in my new book I Love Mondays out now.