While I have some time this morning, I wanted to post these photos from a recent beach trip before it’s next spring and I still haven’t done it. Life has felt fairly turbulent lately. I’ve wanted to write about why but also afraid of writing about it at all, as it has to do with a recent job change and how that’s affected my daily life. I wish I felt comfortable sharing more openly on this space but unfortunately I don’t. There is always this concern that someone will retaliate in some way about something I write online if I write about anything remotely negative or disagreeable. So while I feel like I’m finally satisfied with an online space I’ve created for the first time maybe ever, I also wish I felt safe to do a little more with it.
I will say this much: I appreciated having a few days off after starting a new job to reevaluate what I want from my life. Change always comes with growing pains and forces you to step outside of your comfort zone. I think I struggled a lot with complacency and boredom in my old job simply because I’d been in that role for so long. I knew what my days would look like week in and week out. I got this sense that I was stuck, that there was nowhere left for me to go, and that made me restless and anxious, like I was spinning my wheels.
With that being said, I’m struggling to determine if changing jobs has actually been better for me, except monetarily. There’s no question about that aspect. When I was still working from home with my former employer, I did wonder often if I would like going back to the way things were prior to the pandemic—working in an office every day, having my own dedicated work space separate from my living space, etc. I think what I failed to take into consideration is that life is irrevocably different for me now than it was before 2020.
Before 2020, I was blissfully ignorant. I think I hoped I could easily revert back to that person, but now that I’ve actually changed jobs I’m not so sure that’s possible because my personal life and working life did change dramatically as a result of the pandemic. I’m simply different than I was then. My priorities changed, my perspective changed, and while normally I think it’s good to get out of your comfort zone every now and again, I think how you decide to do so plays a major role in whether or not the experience is a beneficial one. I had to adapt and that took a lot of inner work, and then by the time I felt fully adapted I made this huge life change, which has left me reeling.
Of course, it’s still early days at my new job but I can say it’s at least helped me start thinking about what I want in reality versus what I wanted in reverie.
Lauren Michelle Brock 