I am a Contract Manager in a Fortune 50 company making more than $100k/yr. and have been doing this for about 15 years.
My workplace is a mass of chaos and confusion. I’ve given up trying to make a difference because my efforts don’t seem to work out any more, or they take so long to realize that the excitement I felt at the beginning is all but dried up by the end.
Although I absolutely love aspects of what I do – writing and negotiating contract language, crafting strategy and making the business customers happy with a good contract – I am just run dry from the same cycles and discussions over and over, year after year, and how in this company nothing seems to ever get better. It’s just more work, more work, more work, less recognition, less opportunity for development, less money, promotions, and growth.
I am a single parent of a 5-year-old child, trying to juggle a high pressure job, my growing child, a house, navigation of the other parent, feeling overwhelmed and bored at the same time. In short, I feel burnt out and tired. I want to do something new, different, something that matters and that I can see the results of immediately or in a short amount of time. I think about teaching children and what that would look like, not to mention having summers off. I feel like as long as I am in my current job I’ll never find a way to get to a new job.
I’ve left jobs before, big jobs, without having another lined up, and both times I ended up in better positions than I would have if I hadn’t left. But those times were before I had a child, a mortgage, an ex that I don’t always get along with, before I was this close to middle age.
But I am dying in this job. Literally dying. And feeling worse and worse every day, and wondering what I’m teaching my son about life and what work means when he sees me dragging around the house at the end of the day, either depressed, resigned or pissed off. I have lots of reasons to quit, more than I can possibly put here.
So I’ll stop and call this good enough for now.
