What to do When Your Job Sucks

I’m glad you stopped by to read. I want to talk to you heart to heart.

First of all, I’m 50 and I’ve only ever had two jobs in my entire life. So what do I know? Lots so read on and you will see.

When I started my first ever job in my 20’s I really enjoyed it. It had its challenges but I was able to manage well and after about 4 years I had a promotion which came with a lot more money and perks. Initially, all was well and I was able to progress both in my personal and business life. I enjoyed that job too, well, most of it anyway.

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There was one thing that I really did not like and it had to be done just once a month at the end of the month, but I was not comfortable with it. I had real anxiety at the end of each month as the time approached to submit this document. I had sweaty palms, light-headedness, and just a low miserable disposition. Sure I enjoyed the salary I earned but I just could not live my life that way. So I made a plan to resign.

The plan was made two whole years before I eventually resigned. I thought through things with my head properly screwed on, and that is what I want you to do too. Even though your job might be stressing you out, you can’t just give it up on a whim. You’ve got to think with your head screwed on and put plans in place.

One of the things I really enjoyed about that job is that it operated a Performance Incentive Scheme which was quite lucrative. So in addition to the regular salary, at the end of the financial year, we were also paid an additional sum (up to 15%) of our annual salary, dependent on how well we had worked at achieving certain pre- agreed targets.

Well especially because I had set my plan in action, I worked hard and wisely and saved well. I was not sure what I wanted to do in terms of a job, but I knew I could not carry on the way I was. I took out a mortgage before I became unemployed, primarily because my salary could afford me a good mortgage and my ‘years of employment points’ counted towards getting the house.

You know the saying: ‘work hard and play hard too’? Well, I worked hard but I also decided that my play time would come at some later date. So I did not take a holiday in the last 2 years of that employment. Work finished early on a Friday so I had a long weekend to relax and recuperate in time to return to work on Monday to that job that I was beginning to hate more and more.

I saved my 2 years’ worth of ’Incentive’ payments, a great chunk of each month’s pay, and also my money from payment in lieu of holidays. My thinking was if this job really got to me then at least I would have some money to tide me over for a few months until I got another job. But that was really a last resort. I did not want to stop working without having another job to go into. How would I pay my bills if I did?

So that’s one piece of advice I’d like to give you too.

Put plans in place

Don’t just stop!

Read on. I am going to give you viable options of what you can do if your job really sucks.

I started to hear about efforts being made to recruit Jamaican teachers to work in the United Kingdom as well as in the United States. The salary and perks sounded lucrative so I decided to give it a go. I applied, got a phone interview, passed that stage, and decided to make the move! It was a good thing I was not going overboard with excessive spending, as the cost of the flight alone was so exorbitant!  Then there was the thought of accommodation to consider and the total wardrobe makeover as I was moving from the sunny island of Jamaica to cold, wet United Kingdom. My savings came in handy!

What a shock I was in for! Everything was completely different and the behaviour of the students was the worse I had ever seen! But worse was to come! I endured for as long as I could. The pay was good and I was able to pay off my mortgage in Jamaica. It took me a number of years to make my mind up, but I decided this is not the life for me. I was stressed out by the nonchalant attitude of the students and the unrealistic expectations of senior management in addition to the fact that teaching started to look a lot more like constant paper work with the occasional teaching task added in.

After about 7 years of working at this job, I was beginning to experience the detrimental effects; my mental health was so bad I had to have almost 6 months off from work! I was stressed to the limit and I was not thinking straight. I was making irrational decisions and for the first time in my life, I had to be on anti-depressants. That in itself was a nightmare. As I began to feel better, I knew I had to start making some big decisions and I knew I had to make them with my head tightly screwed on.

So here is what I decided:

I couldn’t just give up the job.

I had to put plans in place to see me through.

I sat down and figured out how much I would need to earn each month to be able to pay my bills (including a mortgage in this country). I had a really serious look at my personal finances. I then decided that instead of having a holiday to Jamaica every year, I would go less frequently and instead visit other areas of Europe which would be less expensive.

After I figured that out, I calculated how much less (in terms of time) I would need to work. Yes! I decided I was going to work part-time. So when it was time to go back to work, I went with my mind made up to request a change to part-time employment. Thankfully, it was granted. The two days off did my mental health good as I was able to do things to relax me and improve my well-being. I also looked into alternatives in terms of employment. But to be honest, working for others was not enticing to me.

If you are interested in a different career path, it is important to do your research into what it takes to work in that area. You may need specialist skills that only a course provides. This could be unique to your location, or your job path. For example, finding Australian Online MBAs might be essential for a Sydney-located business entrepreneur. Finding this information out is essential to a smooth transition. For me, I found a different kind of path.

For about a year things were bearable, but I did not want this to be my life. I decided to find another way to make a living. But I wanted something that gave me more control of my life, my earnings and my well-being.

My sister, who had by then migrated and was also living and working here as a teacher was also not enjoying the job so after many discussions, we decided to be our own boss! It’s amazing to be able to say: ‘I am the boss of me!’

We decided to start our own blog and monetize it. But we thought with our head firmly screwed on. We knew it would be unwise to just leave our jobs so we didn’t, but we put plans in place to ease us gently in. We started the blog whilst still working part-time.

Our blog at joleisa.com started out as just a way to talk to our subscribers about things that were of interest to us. Then we made a shift to helping our subscribers manage their lives better – frugal living. There was a lot of learning to do on the way as we were blogging virgins. We heard about an amazing course from Elite Blog Academy that teaches all we need to know to grow the blog business and make real money.

I will be honest with you, blogging comes with challenges, including the need to pay for stuff that we did not know how to do. But as the saying goes, ‘to make money, you have to spend money’.

So we started off by doing online surveys and saving all the money from that in a dedicated account for blogging. You can find all sorts of survey sites online and we used a few but the preferred one is QMEE primarily because the surveys there do not take up a lot of time. (we wanted to dedicate most of our time to the blog and writing awesome content)

Most of the money to pay for the course from Elite Blog Academy came from the money we accumulated from doing online surveys. The course is amazing. Honestly, it has taught us most of what we now know about blogging. It comes highly recommended.

We understand perfectly well what it means to struggle because you don’t really know how to do certain technical things and we have had a lot of help and support from other amazing bloggers. We are willing to share and help others too. So if you think blogging is something you could do, and you need any help, send us an email at joleiscreed@yahoo.com and we will be more than willing to offer our help. We make no promise that we know everything but we will be able to point you in the direction of those who know and will be able to help.

So if your job sucks, blogging might just be for you. We wrote a simple, easy to understand post about how you can start your own blog which you can read by clicking here.

So we have both resigned our jobs and now make money from our blog. There are a number of ways to make money from your blog. We wanted to maximise this as much as possible so we did another awesome course called Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing where we have learned the real deal about making the most of our blog to make money legitimately. I don’t think we could have made as much as we are now without doing this course.

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We have even chronicled some of our experiences from the blog in a book called Living Life While Squeezing Lemons. This is our first published book and much more is on the way as we believe we can really help others whose job or life sucks!

By the way, we paid one additional person to edit the book. Everything else we did on our own. I bet you can’t guess how we paid that bill! Well, maybe you have…from our QMEE Survey money!

Finally, there is no reason for you to stay in a job that stresses you out, but be wise in your decisions, put plans in place, don’t just give up. And remember if you think blogging is something you could do, give us a shout at joleisacreed@yahoo.com and we will help as much as we can. If we can help to ease some of the learning challenges we had by helping others, then we would have done our good deed.

Good luck.

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