Career Change, Depression

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30 year old male with an 8 year career in environmental science. I have been primarily a 50/50 field/office worker for the past 8 years. The job has had it’s ups and downs - it wasn’t the worst thing I could have been doing during my 20’s, but certainly not the best. Lots of traveling and outdoor work. Now that I am getting older, I have started to question if this career is something I see being sustainable for the next 30 years. Increasingly, the answer is no.

As I see it, there are two main career paths as an environmental worker once you hit 30. You either remain a field worker or you shift into project management. The field workers I work with who have remained field workers beyond their 30’s are alcoholics, chain smokers, out of shape and have either destroyed or have nonexistent family lives due to the demands of the job. On the other hand, project managers work behind a desk all day shifting numbers around and writing mind numbing reports. They are also expected to drink the corporate kool-aid that gets fed to them. As the world continues to get crazier, that kool-aid is becoming more and more potent.

The quality of life for me right now is shit. I’m either traveling and living a life with no stability (50-60 hour weeks sometimes), or I’m doing mind numbingly boring tasks and am expected to to only be doing work that is “billable” to the client. If you are not billable to a certain degree (~35 hours per week), corporate management starts asking questions and the expectation is that you find more billable office work or start traveling again. Expected to be on ALL the time is exhausting.

The first three years at my current company I was on anti depressants. Coworkers around me would leave for different companies or leave the industry all together typically within a couple of years. I ended up getting significant raises year after year. I don’t care enough to find out the specifics, but I would estimate I have increased my salary by 40% since being at the new company. Essentially I was able to out compete with all of them because the drugs made me an emotionally numb drone.

Last August, I decided it was time for me to get off anti depressants. I felt like they were turning me into a sociopath. I would feel absolutely nothing in my personal relationships and just felt like an emotional zombie. It wasn’t a life worth living. Ever since I have been off the meds, my performance has absolutely cratered. I have no desire to run my health into the ground to increase profits for the company and all the corporate bullshit I used to compartmentalize has now become absolutely intolerable. We have a work from home policy so oftentimes I literally sleep in and do absolutely nothing at all. Over my first three years I built up enough goodwill to get away with this for a while, but I feel like people are starting to notice. The issue is - I can’t turn the drive back on. I am not invested in this job at all and have no desire to do anything. All I care about is trying to get healthy again and find some kind of meaning in my life.

I feel guilty currently for my poor work performance, and that is just driving me deeper into depression. I think it is important as a man to have a good relationship with the work you are doing. From my experience, productivity and mental health often are correlated. As the saying goes “nothing changes if nothing changes”. When I feel invested in my work I know I can be productive and happy. I don’t believe I can be productive and feel good about the work I am doing in this career anymore however.

T-Nation members who have gone through a career change: How did you go about transitioning? How did you determine what career you would switch to. Do you regret changing careers? Any advice for steps or mistakes to avoid going forward would be appreciated.

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Hey man, thank you for venting on here - you shared some very important points to unpack.

Lots of the people here will soon chime in, and can give you some really helpful answers. I will too, but want to take the time to give you a detailed and thoughtful answer for this subject in a later post. And you are completely justified for feeling tired, depressed, frustrated, and overwhelmed.

At least for tonight, know that there are good solutions - and there is one that will work for you. We had a thread where a chef, an engineer, and a logger realized we all painted our shit pink. On a bodybuilding website of all places. Those jobs and careers evolved and in hindsight became what was built on, and is now funny.

Take care, it may not feel like it but you are doing the right things.

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So you were taking an anti-depressant and you did really good and life was good.

Then you quit taking an anti-depressant and your life seems terrible, intollerable kool-aid & stuff, and you hate life.

Am I hearing this correctly?

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Antidepressents suck worse than eating out a leek with honey mustard.

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:man_shrugging:t2: They might. I like leaks, plain or honey mustard though.

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I figured I would need to clarify more as people respond to this. As far as work - yes, I was successful on SSRIs. However, many other aspects of my life suffered on these medications. I am sure I need to go back on them at some point to get over this hump, but the root of the issue remains that there is some underlying factor that is causing me to feel this way. I have pinned down the most likely issues for the depression as my fitness (which I have spent the past 2 months working on and will continue to), addiction to the internet, and a lack of any kind of real life friend network. I think all of these issues can be addressed, but I don’t think they can be addressed as long as I am doing what I am doing. The SSRIs were a band-aid, but one that came with costs. I’ve determined those costs are no longer worth the benefits to me and would like to explore other avenues for dealing with my problems.

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Ok. Thats pretty reasonable.

So fitness- Thats a time & effort thing, a ball that is in motion one way or another. Do you like the direction thats going, considering that fact that it is going is a big plus?

And Friends/network- I’m not great at this myself and could use some work in that regard. I don’t play well with others but get along well with others who dont play well with others either.
It makes for some interesting paradoxical relationships.

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Welcome to middle age. You are just precocious and hit it early.

Tyler Durden said, “We work jobs we hate, to buy things we don’t need, to impress people we don’t like.”

You need to quit, because,

I did not go through a career change. I attempted suicide by starvation with an ample helping of crack cocaine.

Up to you.

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I have a training journal on the fitness, but the TLDR is that I used to be active in the gym up until 2019 or so, ended up being impacted by nagging back/knee issues, a breakup, and shifted focus to career and eventually came to a rock bottom moment leading into this year. I actually think quitting the SSRIs was catalyst for this - once you start feeling again, you realize how bad things have become. I changed up my training to avoid the problem areas and have just started meeting with an excellent PT and we are working on muscular imbalances he identified so I am feeling very optimistic on my training. I just recently hit a PR on a major compound lift for the first time since mid 2018 and am about to enter into a fat cutting phase soon.

I am the same way. Usually the people I end up forming friendships with are the people who don’t fit in. I’m not a drinker or a partyer, and I find it difficult to fit in with people who live “normal” lives. I think if I found a common ground like some sort of sport or outdoor activity I could have friends, but the work schedule makes that difficult.

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Please no. I could write a paper about that fucker.

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Great novel, author is from my hometown.

Pretty brilliant.

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That’s really cool. I met Chuck at a book signing once. For like, 3 minutes maybe.

Anyway, my small point is that Tyler isnt a goal to persue, hes a hurdle.

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Right. I started thinking the same thing. All of the things that transpired were acts of a desperate man, which culminated in him shooting himself in the head to kill Durden.

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It’s been a while. But, as I tell my son, all good literature examines the moral ambiguity of man.

The split personality of Tyler is a great example.

Like most things, I think the book is better than the movie.

Anytime you steal fat from a lipo clinic, convert it to high end soap and sell it back to the fat people that had lipo, hey, I am in.

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I created a new thread so we don’t hijack his one.

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I fucked around in my 20s doing lots of ‘fun’ jobs and studied a few courses without any real direction. I ended up in finance making good money, and I didn’t mind the work but I wasn’t ‘happy’.

I took the plunge, followed my calling and joined the police at 31. I have never looked back. I absolutely love what I do. I had to take a significant pay cut initially for about 15 months or so but it was absolutely worth it. I haven’t regretted it for a single second.

It’s definitely easier to bet on yourself when you know what it is you are supposed to be doing though.

I wish you well

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