By most objective measures, my life is going great. I still feel lost
The past few years things have, in a lot of ways, been going great. I've got a house, a job with above average pay for my area, a supportive extended family, and I'm in the healthiest relationship of my life. I truly am thankful for all of that, and I recognize that there are so many people out there who would kill to have my life. Still yet, I just feel like things aren't quite right.
Stepping back a bit, I had a rather tumultuous decade. I had hit a wall, professionally, which caused some pre-existing mental health issues to really flare up. I'll be the first person to admit that I wasn't at my best and, unfortunately, the girl I'd been dating for years at that point wasn't equipped to deal with it. By mid 2019 she ended things, which nearly broke me. Fortunately I had the gumption to pull myself up off the floor and recognize that I needed a change of scenery, so I moved to another state. Things went well enough, so I took a new job in yet another one. I loved the people I worked with, but the job, itself, was a bit of a nightmare. Around that time my grandpa was diagnosed with a rare degenerative disease, so just shy of a year into that job I relocated back to my hometown to help take care of him. It felt weird coming back, but I was able to find a decent job and made the best of things.
During my time in the wilderness, I took the time to work on myself. I sought therapy, worked on forging new friendships, and, eventually, dipped my toes into the dating pool. I'd describe my efforts on all those fronts as mostly successful, and was generally in a better headspace than I had been when I left. Still, things weren't quite where I wanted them to be. Unfortunately, most of my old friends had long since left the place where I grew up, and it was hard to meet new people in my rural area who shared my interests and values. Don't get me wrong, there are some great people who live around here, but, quite frankly, there's not a lot of opportunity, and those who tend to really connect with me tend to move out for greener pastures. Still, I made the best of things. Eventually, I was fortunate enough to meet a girl - the type that I wasn't sure really even existed. She's smart. She's funny. And, best of all, she and I are just so incredibly compatible. We share a lot ethics and values, and we have similar life experiences. She just gets me in ways that I didn't think another person could. I fell for her hard and fast, and I genuinely can't imagine what my life would be like without her. By the end of our first year together I knew that she's the person I wanted to share my life with - she's that spice that brought out all the other flavor in my life.
So, yeah, things have been great, and I'm incredibly thankful. At the same time, I absolutely hate my professional life and don't know how I'm going to do this for another 25+ years.
My background is in student affairs, and while I genuinely do enjoy working with students, I'm just about at the end of my rope with the profession. The first job I had after leaving my home state was at a very large R1 school with tons of bureaucracy and inadequate training or professional development. My next job was at a small private school that had great people, but some rot at the top of the administrative structure that was placing some unrealistic demands on faculty and staff across the university. My department went from 10 people when I started to just three of us when I left. There were plenty of other great people in leadership roles from other departments who left as well - I was an assistant director and was privy to some of the goings on in those other departments. When I came back to my hometown I was fortunate to step back into a student facing role at a very well resourced private institution. There were certainly things about it that annoyed me, but, for the most part, I liked the job. Unfortunately, I reported to an assistant director who seemed to have some inexplicable ax to grind against me. Ultimately I was on a hiring committee with him and cast my lot for a highly qualified external candidate, rather than the internal person that he supported, and there simply was no going back from there. He refused to speak to me unless absolutely necessary, he started throwing terrible assignments at me, and he started adjusting my schedule (we worked a hybrid schedule) in ways that he knew would make things difficult for me. He even refused to complete my annual performance review. Obviously, I had to leave.
Ultimately, I was able to find a completely remote role at an institution on the other side of my state. It was no longer in student affairs, but still within higher education. The pay was a little better than I had been making, and I no longer had to commute. It seemed like a perfect situation! Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that my role had been created to solve an immediate need, without any sort of long-term plan or vision for what was needed from my role. I did my best to find things to make myself useful, but ultimately found myself with little to do. Then, my supervisor retired and someone new came in. There's nothing wrong with my new supervisor as a person, but she and I just don't mesh well. I think we both try our best to make things work, but we just can't get on the same page. As a result, I'm feeling more detached than ever and am slipping into patterns where I have trouble finding motivation to do much of anything. I've been doing my best to find something new, but it's just hard to find anything that will pay a living wage in my rural area.
I just feel stuck. I regret ever going into student affairs, and I regret leaving my last job. Although things were terrible with the person I reported to, the director and I had a good relationship and I probably could've stuck things out. Unfortunately, it seems as though my instinct when things get tough is to just escape, and it's causing me a lot of grief. Did I make a mistake leaving that last job? Am I making a mistake trying to leave my current one? Is my problem a career mismatch, or is it something more fundamental to my character? I see my younger brother advance and succeed in his career, as well as friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, and I can't help but wonder if I'm the problem. And if the problem does lie with me, how do I fix it? Right now it's just so hard to find any motivation to do my job, and I genuinely don't know how I can do this until I'm able to retire. I've considered going back to school, but many of the programs I've explored would have me finishing after I turn 40. Making a career change in my 40s sounds... undesirable. So instead I find myself here, baring my soul on Reddit while I avoid starting a project that I really can't find the energy to do.
Lunch is a homemade chipotle chicken bowl with sauteed peppers and onions, cilantro lime rice, and some pico de gallo.