Working Wounded: Seven Signs It’s Time for a Career Change – Part 2

Is your weekend coming earlier and earlier in the week? Do you find yourself seeking ways to numb out? Thirsty Thursday generally takes place on two levels. The first is a more benign level of distraction, seeking out fun and entertainment -- "hectic and expensive pleasure," as Alan Watts calls it.

 

More problematic is the level of numbing out, acted out through different forms of self-medication and addiction. This is obviously a more serious problem, one which I can't fully address here.

The point I do want to make, though, is that both of these levels are responses to the lack of meaning and satisfaction at work.They are, in a sense, compensations for feelings of emptiness, "means of seeking relief from the tedium."

One of the things that makes a work satisfying is the ability to lose ourselves in it, to get deeply absorbed in doing it. So, when our work does not take us out of ourselves, when it does not have something transcendent in it that causes us to lose ourselves, we may seek other means of "getting out of our heads."

The solution, of course, for the desire to numb out, is to find something to which you can give yourself completely, a work that makes you feel engaged and alive.

Change is hard. But not changing is harder. If you have no bright future into which you can "dive deep and swim far," as Emerson recommends, then it becomes all too easy to be caught by the past. Sentimental Saturday stands for those experiences of reminiscing over the "good old days," of getting lost in what could have been, what almost was, and what will never come again.

These days we even have tools that make it easier to become "a slave of your own past." Social media outlets like Facebook have made it ridiculously easy to reconnect with the old gang or the long lost love from way back when. But as sweet as nostalgia can feel at times, and despite the reported health benefits, it is ultimately a melancholy feeling.  

This kind of experience is certainly not limited to Saturday, though the weekend is often that one time of the week when we have long stretches of time to wander and wallow in feelings of regret. Our longing for the past, however, is really more about our present need for growth and development than it is about the past. 

Mario Jacoby, a Jungian analyst, in a marvelous book called Longing For Paradise, demonstrates how this kind of longing is really a longing for the Self, the fullest expression of our personality and individuality. In other words, it is a nostalgia for the future, for who we might become. It is the call of our deepest potentials seeking to be realized.

A career change feels hard, and becomes even more so at 40 or 50 and beyond. But if the weekend finds you listening over and over to the song Martha from Tom Waits' Closing Time and wallowing in "What got away" then it is definitely time to find newer and more "sublime seas" into which to dive.

"I'm a bear. I'm just not any fun to be around." That's how one client of mine described himself on Sundays.

Perhaps you've had a similar experience: You are enjoying your weekend, enjoying being with friends or family and then...Wham! Suddenly, it feels impossible to enjoy anything at all. You get grumpy. Irritable. It seems that everyone around you is doing everything they can to annoy you. Your fuse gets shorter and you find yourself snapping at people for no good reason.

If this description fits, then you are suffering from the Sunday Slump. Sundays, it turns out, are difficult for almost half the population. One recent study showed that 48% of people have difficulty sleeping on Sunday night. The reason? You guessed it. Work. According to survey provider Toluna Omnibus:

And, I would add, the problem often starts earlier in the day with that onset of irritability. As Carl Jung notes, our irritation is usually more about ourselves than about the other person who is presumably irritating us. Were we to do some honest self-examination in those moments we would see the true cause of our bad mood.

It is the workweek and all its attendant pains that are creeping back into consciousness. The Sunday Slump is the precursor, usually, to Monday Mourning. And so we go round once more.

In this two part post, I have been describing the different ways that discontent at work can manifest and I have described these as signs that it is time for a career change. But, to be honest, I believe it goes even deeper than this. I believe that there is such a thing as a calling, and I believe that the kinds of experiences I have been describing happen when you get off track from that calling.

The struggles and challenges of Monday Mourning, Thirsty Thursday, Sentimental Saturday and all the rest, are signs that your calling is making its claim. As the Jungian analyst, James Hillman once wrote:

These signs and symptoms are also indications of an opportunity. It is an opportunity to grow. It is an opportunity to feel more alive. It is an opportunity to unfold your potential and live out your calling. And today is as good as any day to begin.

Take good care.