NEW LIFE:After 10 years of working in an office, I'm giving up a secure job with a good salary to pursue a career in writing – and have signed up for a Masters in Journalism
I’M GETTING RID of the safety net. Instead of having it pulled from under me like the many workers facing redundancy, I’m folding it up and putting it away myself. At the height of a recession and old enough to know better, I have just resigned from a secure, well-paid job and become income-less – a student again.
It all feels a bit kamikaze. I’m intentionally crashing my own aircraft, a manned missile if you will, bombing my old life of stability and financial security when so many are clinging to these things for dear life.
Rather like a bungee jump, I’m about to do something that my heart wants, meanwhile mind and body are screaming, “Don’t do it!’’ It feels both thrilling and counter-intuitive all at once.
What lies ahead is a tightrope walk of possible penury, juggling mortgage payments with building a new career. There’s already an audience of family and friends gathering below – egging me on, but also covering their eyes.
The seed for this great escape has always been there, even before my 10-year office incarceration. A way of living that allowed me to be more creative – how lovely would that be?
But caught up in the whirlwind of the boom, “affluenza’’ took hold. Clothes, dinners, holidays, a car, an apartment, more holidays – the seed met hostile ground as I worked hard to earn more to reward myself more for working so hard.
Then I was promoted to a new role at the office – “budgeting’’ and “forecasting” was the parlance, a language that I struggled to speak or inflect with any passion.
I was in a desert of numbers when I thirsted for words. My trouble is that I nod and tilt my head all too convincingly, landing myself in roles that have stretched my abilities. This leaves me cruising at a speed well beyond my comfort level – but for which I’ve been generously rewarded.
Over time, I’ve learned that travelling at too high a gear like this is costly on energy – and the travel sickness is compounded when you feel you’re heading in the wrong direction. It was time to burn out or exit.
Could I do what I love and just write? It was time to find out. I discovered a Masters in Journalism course for which I could apply and began saving.
At this time, things were still booming, the money was coming in, so saving felt a bit like building a tornado shelter in Offaly – nice to have but did I really need to do it? But with the sound of the recession ratcheting up, half-assed saving turned into fervour.
A little shop of horrors in Lidl and Aldi revealed just how much I had been overspending on food alone.
A housemate was secured to bring extra cash too – though company means no more eating tuna from a tin or watching E! News in my knickers. The indulgence of living alone sacrificed for rent money.
The great escape is now upon me. I’ve done the dig around for the right route out, conducted a survey of finances, aired my civilian clothing – my student documentation is all in order.
I’ve procured contraband, secreting away the odd highlighter or pen – I’m stockpiling like a manic squirrel, gathering resources to see me through a journey of indeterminate length. The stage is set.
Night after night I hear all the talk of contraction, job losses, depressed consumer spending, creeping interest rates – the voices of the sober-suited economists ring in my ears at bedtime, and I wake with night terrors over my planned escape.
There’s shreds of Stockholm Syndrome too, where I realise I’ve fallen a bit in love with my generous captor – a good salary, car allowance, paid phone bill, the structured days and weeks, every hour carved up from Monday to Friday.
I’m saying goodbye to these lures and to the building where I’ve spent most of the past five years. I’m terrified.
Of course, the “smart’’ thing to do would be to stay in the office for a few more years, riding out the economic storm – but lately I’ve come to realise that time is my most precious commodity, not money.
While I’d be saving money, I’d be frittering away time and, as a being with a finite shelf life, it’s time that I want to spend wisely.
I know how lucky I am, being able to plan for this change. I’m all too aware of the courage of those who find themselves involuntarily without a pay cheque, with more commitments than I and few choices.
What won’t I miss when I leave the office job? I won’t miss the paltry two hours I have to myself between dinner and bedtime four days a week.
I won’t miss the morning race, speed-showering during the Morning Ireland sports results, so that I can listen to the business news while wolfing down my cereal.
I won’t miss leaving the house in the dark and returning in the dark for five months of the year, sitting at a desk in fluorescent light, doing something I can do but am not passionate about.
I won’t miss being too busy or knackered to attend a funeral, send a birthday card or phone a friend.
I won’t miss using weekends to sleep off the week or the nameless dread of a Sunday night.
I’m a hard worker, I know that. I’m willing to work all the hours in the day – but now I want this time to be spent on doing something that I really enjoy.
With newspapers and media outlets contracting, I realise that writing for a living will be a tough route.
The escape has some romanticism to it now, but I know that tough times probably lie ahead. I’m up for the challenge.
Giving up a job in a time of recession will sound about as madcap as going off to join the circus. I’m steeling myself for disbelief.
Wish me luck!