You know that feeling when you’ve been in a job so long that all excitement about working on a project just starts to feel empty inside? You start to wonder if your actually making an impact? You go through the monotonous tasks of updating charts, writing procedures, taking notes for meetings that people will forget about as soon as the meeting is over. You feel like the walls are closing in on you as you drive to work and the storm clouds seems to just get darker and darker. That’s how I felt for way too long and work started to feel more like hell than heaven. I needed to change my attitude and perspective on life
About three years ago, I started to change all that. I was exhausted, I was over the grind and did some major soul searching (and therapy) in trying to find what I truly wanted to do with my life. I needed to let go of the things that were out of my control and search for what I was passionate about, and then put in the work to change my attitude. I striped it back to the things that really mattered to me and my family, what excited me and gave me that spark and what I was passionate about. I knew I wanted to run a business from home, work with my hands, use more of the engineering side of my brain, and become an entrepreneur.
At this point in my career, I felt like I had stagnated and was just going through the motions to survive. After a bad day at work, I went home and told my wife I wanted to start a business from home and that I was going to take out a loan to buy a CNC plasma machine. After about two weeks I had finally found that machine that I was after and we purchased it. Fast forward through the next three years and I learned how to run a CNC machine, how to design, how machining software works, learned to read some G-code, how social media works, and what it takes to run a small manufacturing business more efficiently. I haven’t learned it all and never will, but I am now to a point where I feel comfortable taking on these larger products.
You ever get that feeling that every time you made a mistake or failed it was moving you towards your goal? I was making these mistakes during this time, but I never felt like they were failures, they were just a way of telling me how to improve.
Which brings us to about a week ago. With the love of my family and support from my wife, I finally decided to take the jump and move towards my dreams. Albeit a scary and exciting time for us, I am prepared to move forward, put in the work, and enjoy the process.
For those in a similar situation of not liking your job, all I can say is, put in the work now, don’t procrastinate, hustle your ass off, and don’t give up on the dream, and in the words of Alan Watts ~ “Every path is the right path”