u/lascriptori

Basically what the title says. Late 40s. I have a fairly high stress job (nonprofit lobbyist for a progressive cause in a red state, I promise I'm one of the good guys) and I'm deeply, deeply burnt out and have been for some time. I make a salary just barely over 6 figures, as does my husband. There are a lot of things I love about my job and org, but I've accepted that I don't want to do it anymore. I should add that I'm neurotypical, I don't have any physical or mental health struggles, I have an awesome supportive marriage and family. I'm just burnt out.

I've started looking at other jobs, but the jobs with similar pay that I'm qualified for seem like they would have stress levels that are the same at best, or possibly much higher. I keep on looking at jobs that seem like they would be utterly lovely for quality of life, but would pay about half of what I'm making.

I haven't crunched numbers to fully see how extremely low our budget could go, but we live in a fairly high cost of living town, our autistic 12 year old goes to a small private school where he is happy and loved (after being deeply unhappy in public school), and fully up and moving to another town is not a current option because we're taking care of aging parents. That said, I think we could make the budget work, at least for a while. But it feels crazy and irresponsible to even consider it.

We have a friend who died suddenly in her 40s of a very aggressive cancer (from first symptom to death was about 4 months), and the year prior, she had quit her stressful job, moved to the region that she loved and was working a part time job while making art. I kept thinking that I was so glad she had taken that step, which probably felt crazy, and had that time doing what she loved. And then it occurred to me that any of us could get a crazy diagnosis or get hit by a bus at any point.

So, if you quit a high paid, high stress job to move to a lower-paid, low stress job, how was it?

I have a small camponotus castaneus colony that I got in January with the queen and 6 workers, in a minihearth. It seemed to be going great, but they started eating the larva before it pupated (edit to clarify: they ate the larva and then I got the heat pad, thinking that the cold may have triggered them to eat the larva).

I really thought I was giving them plenty protein and sugars (cut up meal worms several times per week plus nectar), so I was wondering if the issue was the nest was too cold, which I read can also induce campos to eat larva. We live in the south and our house is almost always between 72-79 degrees. I did notice them being a lot more active when it’s warmer.

I read all the threads I could find about heating minihearths and it didn’t seem like anyone had a great solution. I was able to find a tiny 4x5” heat mat (https://a.co/d/0gI5KAcx) but it doesn’t have a temperature control.

I have a tiny temperature gauge, which reads about 90 degrees when it’s sitting directly on it. However, I don’t know how to actually measure temperature inside the hearth since it’s so small and no thermometer would actually fit inside. Should I get one of those temperature guns to check?

When I put the hearth sitting fully on the map, it got a lot of condensation and the ants seemed like they were trying to avoid the lower half of the nest.

I put the hearth sitting half on, half off the mat, which seems to be better, but I’m still not sure if I’m doing this right. I’d really like to see the current clutch of eggs pupate and hatch.

If you took a significant pay cut for a lower stress job, did it improve your quality of life?