Balancing My Work and Lifestyle

I was sitting here wondering what I want to write about today and then I realized that I haven’t shared my recent good news with everyone on my site. I mentioned it in passing on twitter but not here.

Here it is … I’m an anomaly when it comes to careers, there I said it. Now your probably wondering what that means. Well that’s all I’m saying … just kidding. On to the long drawn out story, sorry it’s how I roll … grab a coffee and take a peek into my weird thought processes.

Job != Dissatisfaction

I grew up in a household where we were reminded almost daily how much our parents hated their jobs. Every single day, in one form or another, we were reminded of this. Sighs, yelling, anger, or just the statement “I hate my *%#@ job” were normal communications and gestures of hello.

When your young you wonder why they’re doing it if they hate it so much? Why not change jobs? As you get older your realize it’s hard to pick a job, keep a good family balance, pay bills, find security, etc so you want to make sure you pick the right major early and find the job that fits because you never want to have your kids see you dreading every single day.

Why would you want to hate your job? Why would anyone want their kids to be reminded of that hate every day?

It’s because of this that I vowed to never hate my job and if I ever did I’d change it. Whether that change was working to improve it, transferring internally, or finding a new job I will always strive for job satisfaction and balance. No I’m not crazy and yes I realize that all jobs have their moments of pain and anguish, it is a job after all. There is a difference though between hate and short term pain.

What I want from a career

For me a career (not a job) is about working with smart people, being challenged, challenging others, and feeling like my knowledge and expertise are appreciated and supported. Finding a job that has all those things can be maddening and for me I’ve changed jobs 8 times including working for myself twice in my 12 years since graduation.

Here’s an interesting thing I’ve noticed about my career timeline, you can almost exactly correlate my ups and downs in weight to my job changes and associated amounts of stress that said jobs introduced. It never fails that historically some kind of external stimuli / stressor caused something in my already fragile lifestyle change to fall apart and I’d resort to not working out or eating right. As you might imagine a good work / life balance is on my list of career must haves now.

On with the news

So with all of that out of the way what is my news? As you’ve likely already deduced I’m changing jobs, hopefully for the last time. I’ve been consulting the past 6 months and while it’s paid work I don’t find it rewarding nor is it what I’d call stable. I’ve been looking for the right job for a while now and it had to have all of my prerequisites especially the work / life balance. There’s no way I can succeed at this new lifestyle if I’m constantly fighting a battle of stress and balance at work.

Well I think I’ve found that company and I’m starting there in two weeks. I’m taking a week in between jobs to relax with the family before jumping right back in but I’m excited and really hopeful for the opportunities that have been presented to me there. The people, the environment, the challenges, and the balance all appear to be present. Wish me luck!

Do you love or hate your job? Does it hurt or help your healthy lifestyle?

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