A bit of a bind

I’ve been redundant for six months. I’ve burned through just over half of the redundancy money and my partner is getting more and more agitated about my lack of work.

Image by She is gone from Pixabay

Having taken up full time work after my redundancy, my partner needs to move back to part time as her mental health won’t sustain her for much longer, and she wants to spend more time with our 17 month old. The little one has been in childcare for 3 days a week for the last 4 months while I’ve been looking for work and keeping up on the household chores. We have 5 kids altogether - 4 part time as they’re from previous marriages - so there are plenty of chores. I’ve had the baby one day a week, and in the last 6 weeks or so, my partner has had her on the other, using up some excess annual leave.

After initially feeling quite panicked by being out of work, and motivated to find work, I quickly settled into the role of house husband. I often find myself saying the same thing as retired people: ‘I don’t know how I’d have the time to fit in a full time job’.

I’ve half heartedly updated my CV and looked for work during the last six months and had two interviews, neither of which were successful. I had the same feelings towards both: I was worried that I wouldn’t be good enough for the demanding roles, and my heart wasn’t in either of them. They were both jobs that I could theoretically do based on my experience and skills, but I wasn’t into the mission of either organisation and wasn’t thrilled about the roles either. In fact, I was frightened that those roles would be beyond me, and that I’d wake up every morning hating the fact that I had to go and do them. Crucially, I thought they’d probably make me ill, and I couldn’t look the interviewers in the eye and say ‘I really want this’ - I was completely faking it. And therein lies the problem.

90% of my 20 years in work have been bad, so I’m now in that pretty awful bind of only having experience in something I really don’t want to do anymore. Retraining is the obvious answer, but I’m in my late forties and the money will run out soon. Going back into a line of work that at best doesn’t interest me, and at worst makes me ill, is a bad idea. So maybe I do need to find a way to change course. But first I need to know, change course to what?

I’ve been thinking about everything I’ve done to date and reflecting on how it made me feel. My first proper jobs interested and motivated me: building websites and web apps for public sector organisations. The internet was pretty new and I found it really rewarding creating something that I could show to friends and family, and that served the public. I worked hard developing my skills and putting them to good use: HTML, JavaScript image editing, Microsoft Front Page, Microsoft Access and ASP.net. I remember staying late in the office, and my colleague asking me why I did that, and I responded that I loved doing the work and learning and had nothing better to do. The problem was that after a few years, I became the sole developer at my organisation. More and more of my time was spent maintaining existing apps rather than building new ones. I also felt like a phoney - hacking together bits of code I found on the internet rather than feeling like a really competent professional. I’ve always struggled with imposter syndrome.

Then came the opportunity to move into project management. My boss was a project manager, and I thought the job looked interesting. It also paid better. I thought moving away from technical work and into a management role would be good for me (progression?!), especially as I doubted the quality of my technical skills, never managing to shake off the feeling that I was an amateur. —Backstory: I dropped out of a computer science degree in the early part of the second year when I was 19, as I just didn’t understand enough. I got back into tech after completing a fairly non-technical Information Management masters, but building a web app for my dissertation.—

The organisation needed a new website and Content Management System, and I put myself forward to lead the procurement, design and build. That first project was probably the best project I ever delivered, and the one I enjoyed the most. After that I moved into more general project management and did a wide variety of things from putting an ANPR system into a multi-storey car park, to managing service redesign and improvement projects, to an Active Lifestyle programme to get local communities moving.

For the majority of my career as a project and programme manager, I was generally unmotivated and did the bare minimum. Again, I felt like a fake… Sometimes I knew little about the project subject matter and felt out of my depth. Managing people was painful. Project management was sometimes great when I was part of a great team with a good mission, but often miserable when the project concept was terrible or very boring and the team wanted nothing to do with it. I’ve done a bit of Service Design work in the last few years, and quite enjoyed the User Research and User Interface design elements of it, but it all felt pointless as the technical team were very limited and could only make a fraction of the changes that our work demonstrated were needed.

Towards the end of my employment I did scandalously short hours, enabled by a 100% remote arrangement and a very hands off boss. I knew my position was precarious, but I didn’t have the energy, motivation or courage to do anything about it. I rode the gravy train until the track ran out.

In terms of other stuff I’ve done, I’ve done Sunday School teaching with little kids. While I love working with kids, even that felt very stressful. As much as I love the thought of being a teacher (because I love learning and teaching), I’m not cut out for standing in front of 30+ kids every single day. My up and down mental health means that there are days where I simply can’t face people, and sometimes those days stretch into weeks and months. I was a lifeguard many years ago but that was boring and poorly paid as was my spell working on a counter in a busy petrol station - added to that, the customers were occasionally real assholes which got to me.

Other external factors had an impact on my career. My family grew with the arrival of two kids. My marriage imploded and I went on a crazy journey of self discovery, finally recognising, understanding and working on my mental health challenges. I entered into an insane long distance relationship which ended disastrously and then after another casual fun relationship with an older woman, finally settled down with a new partner who became pregnant four months after we first met - which even more insanely, was planned.

My partner and her two kids moved in and we’ve been battling to develop a harmonious blended family ever since. Shortly after she moved in, she supported me in going into a legal battle with my ex wife for shared care of my two kids. That led to nearly two years in and out of court, which hammered our finances and was incredibly emotionally draining to the point where we very nearly split up, but ultimately had a really positive outcome. I’ve also been supporting my partner and her eldest with their recent autism diagnoses and have been on a journey to understand autism, and how I can better support them. All of that in addition to other behavioural and emotional issues with all of the other older kids has been very challenging.

I briefly mentioned my own mental health. About 6 years ago, I was sort of diagnosed with cyclothymia, which explains the long bouts of deep depression, crippling anxiety, and social awkwardness, interspersed with hypomanic episodes where I’m suddenly full of life and energy, super social, hyper sexual, short tempered and aggressive. This has played merry hell with my life in general, career and relationships.

So what now. Well I’ve been procrastinating. Putting off the job search and busying myself with other things because the truth is a bit scary: I don’t feel very qualified. I don’t really know what I want to do. I’m getting into the ‘job market ageism danger zone’. I don’t feel like a very desirable prospective employee. I rode the gravy train for far too long, not investing in myself, not learning, not developing, just decaying, feeling completely uninspired, loathing my job, feeling on edge, impostery and very socially awkward. Ultimately, I suppressed reality and just took the money.

The good news is that writing all of this down has been a bit of a weight off my shoulders. I know that being honest with myself, really exploring my thoughts and feelings is good. Sharing these thoughts with others close to me is the next step. It’s going to be difficult as my partner was accustomed to my level of income, and her ex husband was even more handsomely paid. The thing is, with 5 kids, I really could do with earning a decent salary. But I can’t go back to doing something that isn’t me, that I hate. That is the road to self destruction. So I’m figuring out what I want to do, and then looking for that sweet spot of what I want vs what I’m capable of vs adequate pay.

I’ve had the inkling that I’d like to go back into tech, rather than the management route. I’ve started learning modern web development approaches, beginning with relearning JavaScript. I’m not sure I have the time or capability to get back into development but I’m enjoying using my brain to learn and it’s just more fun than watching Netflix. More dangerously, it’s more fun than looking for and applying for jobs.

Writing this essay has helped me think about what I want to do. The more I think about it, the more working on web apps and websites appeals to me. Service Design is an option, but it feels a little too removed from hands-on work where I can actually develop a real thing. Coding feels a little out of my reach. Maybe something like content design or UI work could be a good fit. User research also appeals as talking to actual customers is interesting. Project or programme management could even be right if the mission and culture of the organisation is good.

My job centre coach introduced me to the concept of Ikigai: How to Get Paid, Enjoy Your Work, Solve Problems, and Find Purpose. I’m going to look more into that and see if I can apply it.

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Hmmm… so this post was supposed to end there on such a positive note. I went downstairs to talk to my partner about it, buoyed that I had a new strategy that felt right. And she shot me down. She told me that she was terrified that I’ve been out of work for six months. That we need money coming in. That I need to stop holding out for a unicorn job. That I just need to get any job to bring some money in. That she’s fed up of defending me to her mother. That I’m not involving her in my thinking and actions.

She doesn’t seem to have heard the fact that going into a job that will make me even more mentally unwell is something that terrifies me and I refuse to do. She asked what happens when my redundancy money runs out, and answered her own question with, ‘You’ll be living off MY money that’s supposed to be used to buy a bigger house’. Well that fucked me right off. I suggested she leave now and buy her own house to protect her own money. Yes, the conversation went that well. And now, instead of feeling a renewed positivity about my job search, I’m feeling bruised, deflated, and anxious.

There is another dynamic to our relationship. As I said before, my partner can’t work full time because of her mental health. Her expectation is that I’ll soon work full time and bring enough money in to enable her to drop to part time, and sustain her lifestyle. I don’t think I’m capable of achieving the salary I was previously on. I feel as though I didn’t really merit that income and that now my true market worth will be realised. To sustain her standard of living, she’d have to work full time, but she can’t. She’s trapped because she’s not mentally well enough to live independently and look after three kids. She relies on me to hold everything together. The only way she could leave me would be to find another man, which she has done before.

I don’t really want to break the family up, but it feels as though her financial expectations are beyond what I can provide. I’m not going to run myself into the ground, struggling with a job that is beyond me, just to live up to her demands. I don’t like the thought of earning less, being less able to give the kids what they want, or continuing to live in a house that’s too small either. But there are limits to what I can achieve.