As I was walking out of my office today I realized that over the last 20 years my work style changed dramatically. When I started my career, I used to go into work at 8am and leave by 4:30pm. I would get a lot accomplished and even have time for travel and personal accomplishments. During this time, I built a successful consulting business that I made about 80k a year in part time revenue as a contractor and teacher. I also had time to earn my private pilots license.
In the last 20 years, something changed. I spent more time working at work. I would go into the office at 9am and work until 6 or 7pm. I would then come home and eat and then work until 1 or 2am, go to bed and start all over. If I was lucky I didn’t repeat this on the weekend, but most of the time I did. I have not flown a plane for almost 10 years and had to fight hard to get free time off for vacations. I even capped out and lost several days of vacation because I could not take them.
As many of you know last December I effected a job change. I had reached a point in which I just could not continue with what I was doing. I was literally doing the job of four people. I know, because I documented the time necessary to do the stuff I was doing and what it would take to hire more people and presented it to management. After waiting ten months for them to do something, I gave up. I had been looking to do an internal transfer but found out after the fact I was being blocked by management. I ultimately realized that it was not going to work out for me in the current situation.
I think the final straw for me was that I busted my butt (after asking for help that I didn’t get) on a project and pulled several coworker’s and manager’s rear-ends out of the fire and I didn’t get a single acknowledgment from my manager or our director about it. To top things off, they gave credit to someone else who spent one hour on the project. I don’t mind working my rear off, but I would like a little recognition for my efforts.
I left with no hard feelings and was more than willing to help them out on issues that would come up in the future. My last few days, I was contacted by my boss to provide documentation on what I had been doing and present it in a meeting. I was absolutely floored that he would wait until the last minute before I left to ask me for this. Fortunately, I already had completed this the previous week and could just print it out and hand it to him in the meeting. I sometimes wonder if they ever really knew what it was I did there. To add insult to injury, I did not even get a goodbye from my manager or his boss who was the one who actually hired me. They basically ignored me for the last two weeks I was there.
Now back to the present as I am walking out of the building I can see my previous employer’s building across the canyon and was able to smile at all the cars still in the parking lot. I looked at our parking lot and most of our workers are home with their families or out having fun with friends and the lot is almost empty. It has taken me about eight months to finally recover. I literally feel like I have been in an abused relationship with my employers for many years. I can not blame them fully as I allowed myself to be taken advantage of and would always be the first one to step up to solve a problem and work all through the night to fix it while others happily leave early or just did not offer to help.
My new company has the attitude that all employees need a work/life balance. My last company said the same thing, but when push came to shove, they would make you cancel vacations, work long hours, work weekends and not care what you may have had planned. On several occasions I have seen my new company put this philosophy into action and I respect them more for it.
After six months in my new position I have finally reach a point that I feel like I have control of my career and life back.
Over the last ten years I have forgotten my mantra: “Never confuse having a career with having a life”. I am finally getting back to this and realizing what Quality of Life I have given up over the last fifteen years for my career. The advice I give now is don’t wait until your so under-appreciated you resent your work. It will only grate on your and ruin quality of life your working so hard to preserve.
So what am I doing now? In my personal life I am doing some of the following:
* Co-Captain of Team Qualcomm BikeMS bike team (http://www.pedalforthecure.org)
* Building a garden railway in my backyard
* On my way to loosing 60 pounds
* Planning lots more vacations