find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life…

I’ve had two career jobs, banking and Home Office, both totally sucked arse as did 80% of the people in them. My favourite jobs were roadie and deck hand on a boat, great fun great people. Now in construction. Bit bored by the work but like all my workmates and the hours are short for me. An erratic CV to say the least.

The grumpy (for want of a better phrase) colleagues you with with seem the core of the issue here.

Every industry has them. The grass can be just as brown…

That said, I’m fortunate. I’ve worked mainly for lovely teams of people (current crowd I would describe as friends not colleagues), or I’ve been able to influence the culture or employment of people.

I did inherit a miserable team, team leader and (my) manager once. It took 18months of careful and considered work to put relationship with manager before the day to day challenges – I chose to back down when needed to win favour, put effort into making sure I was winning confidence of manager. I also put huge effort into working positively and openly with the team leader, right up to the point where I also put her on warning and started the HR route to get her moved on – all while openly telling her what and why it was happening. Three years after she quit I had email basically recognising she had been a totally miserable sh*t and telling me she was better now (but no apology).

Manage your boss and colleagues time….

So we’re just glossing over the fact there’s a jet ski flipping ex special forces member amongst us?

To be failure I thought it was so unrealistic as to be comedy/a troll.   My apologies if it turns out to be a real thing.

Work , Work , Work
Its instilled in us ( and the yanks ) to get on , work all hours , be happy , work all hours , progress your carreer , work more hours , get 2.4 children , work more hours, get dog etc

Then you suddenly realise you are 3/4 dead. The time has gone, and its going to continue to leak away till there is very little left and then there is retirement . Whn you are so ****ed from being out the house for 50hrs a week , 48 weeks of the year , for 48 years of your life you can do nothing with your ‘time off’.

This, however does not help in your current work situation. What you need are some nice colleagues. The ones who bring in biscuits and cake without worrying about it,and make tea for everyone whilst they are making their own.
The ones you want to stop working and have lunch with, then maybe once a month go to the pub on poets day for a shandy.

If you have a manager who is intelligent and forward thinking then recomend stuff that makes working where you work a better place to be. For example .- day off on your birthday ( Rover cars ) flexy time hours. Do you really need to be there at 5pm on a fri ? 4 day weeks if you can work 4 x 10hrs then less time commuting, less money commuting, less polution etc
Try pushing some ideas up the management chain. Radio on at work , redueced lunch ‘hour’ to 40mins so you can all leave early. It might fall flat and all the others might resist change as they are ‘lifers’ who do the absolute minimum to not get fired , and waste 1/4 of their day attatched to a smart phone. This is probably unchangable.
Then move, but dont move without trying to improve the job you have first. If you try and fail then at least you have had a go. Then leave the miserable turds to their own melancoly and walk out whilst whistling the Great Escape theme tune

I think it is a rare thing that I am lucky to enjoy, but I think it also requires a balance in expectations of how you live and to still maintain boundaries between work and home. The work also attracts a lot of like minded people, which helps.

That or you go all in for the career like a friend of mine who will retire in their mid thirties in a month or two.

I’m with Tomd, don’t do your hobby as a job/career. It will suck the joy from it and you’ll need a new hobby. Organising cycling holiday bookings is a close as I want to get to riding a bike for my job. How the guides do it for a season I don’t know. Well I do it’s only for a spring/summer season then they have 6 months doing something else or a holiday.

Sometimes it’s good to develop a professional detachment from those around you. In do a professional job to the best of your ability and go home leaving it all behind for the next day.

Situations can change very quickly and for the worse with work as i’ve found very recently.
I found what i thought were a great little company after years of being just a cog in the wheel etc i was able to look after their electrical department on my own which suited me just fine and i built it up for them to a point where they started employing loads of new engineers. I worked from home a few days a week for 4 years and they payed for my short train journey into work the other days which allowed me to cycle the few miles each way.
In september i was told that work from home was rescinded due to the number of people now in the office (I’m lead to believe that Mitchell and Web type comments were made a lot of the time regarding my WFH situation) and now i’m told the firm don’t want to rent the office any more so they’re moving to a purchased unit which is an hours drive away!
Basically what i’d considered a job that i could have continued with for maybe my remaining working life now looks a very grim prospect. I even garnered myself a new position (revit manager, 3d stuff) which i self thought in my own time and they have also chopped that away saying i’m more valuable as an engineer and they are getting someone else in to do this!!
For what it’s worth i really liked working on my own and now i’m stuck at 46 with an office full of millennials who do my head in.

I’m not sure I love my job, but I certainly do enjoy it. In fact I’ve enjoyed all my jobs. THe one time I really did stop enjoying it I left as it was having an impact elsewhere in my life too

It’s hard, and the hours are ridiculous at the moment, but I have a good team and am working on good things. I also have the respect from others around me and I find the job intellectually demanding. Can’t really argue with that…

Cycling to work is a bonus, and keeps my mental wellbeing in good shape

Hi guys, thank you for the responses so far. It is helping with some much needed perspective at this time. there are a few contributions that confirm my instincts on being ‘happy/life too short etc’ i get all that believe me. For what its worth, I’m not in any danger of turning any hobbies into making a living. A few also happily telling me they work with great teams, have respect and are fulfilled… im happy for you, i really am, but that’s not that constructive, sorry! Its just not my experience and hasn’t been for a long time.

– re changing career vs the people around me: It is true that a career change might be sounding drastic, but ive done more or less the same thing for the last 13 years. Im feeling wasted and unfulfilled with this line of work and crucially feeling isolated in this type of environment.

– ‘clearing the air’ this has only been done with my boss, who as mentioned has been ineffectual and largely kicks emotional problems into the long grass. Hes’ knocking on retirement himself, and i get the impression there’s just not the investment in me as an individual. Others have has serious issues (ironically inter team conflict not related to me) and his head is in the sand. Direct colleagues, wont even talk about their weekend to me, let alone tolerating me standing there and saying “hey, what’s you’re freaking problem huh??!!, you’ve got a face like a slapped arse and its pissing me off” 😉

Has anyone gone through career counselling or had meaningful contact with anyone/services that might help me actually look at where i am, and what strengths and weaknesses i may have? Sitting down and ‘thinking about it’ has got me sweet FA so far..

Getting that work / life balance is hard, i loved being in the Army and playing rugby at a decent level for work and in the forces, but after dislocating my knee badly, found myself on civvie street with qualifications you’d been promised would be relevant outside of the forces, not worth the paper they were written on.

I spent the next few years running a company taking people on trips round Morocco and into West Africa in an old converted Land Rover 101, but as people above have said, i love travel and i love messing about in Land Rovers, but after a while doing it as a job and having to pander to tourists whims and daft questions and requests, it knocks the fun out of it.

I now work for an insurance company, dull as hell, i really miss the banter and the physicality and find working in an office mind-numbing, plus i had to move away from an area rich in mountain biking and a big circle of friends, to Norfolk where i knew no-one.

But i am lucky to have a few really good mates here now and a wife that realises that getting out on my bike or going for the odd beer with them, means i am happier and makes my work life just about tolerable.

I think you’re very lucky if you have a job you really enjoy and you can earn a decent living at. If you are stuck on the 9-5 treadmill, then i think you have to realise why you do it, whether it be to provide for your family or other reasons, and you have to be a bit selfish, and say i need to have those 3-4 hours a week to ride my bike and the odd weekend away with mates for my sanity, i then offer the same for my wife, that i have my daughter whilst she goes away for weekends doing something and i restrict a lot of my riding to getting out at 6am on a saturday or sunday, so i am back at a reasonable time to be with family. You have to find a way to bring some balance to it, otherwise if it just work and nothing else, you will go barmy slowly

Has anyone gone through career counselling or had meaningful contact with anyone/services that might help me actually look at where i am, and what strengths and weaknesses i may have? Sitting down and ‘thinking about it’ has got me sweet FA so far..

My tuppence on this bit. Doing your own research or thinking about things isn’t going to help you that much. New opportunities come from people. Real people. Get out there and meet some. Got an interest (not necessarily a hobby) outside of work? Go do a few courses on it. Chance to volunteer? Book a little a/l and do it. Your transferable skills will start to come out much, much more readily once you have a practical application for them. And your confidence will soar.

On a broader theme, setting up the conditions for you to thrive is a vital part of the move. Getting out on your bike enough? Eating healthily and engaging your brain with stuff that stimulates you outside of work? Got positive close relationships with friends/partner etc? Getting this stuff right, in my opinion, is as critical as finding that ‘perfect job’. I think the two things are interlinked.