I’m 49 at the end of a 29 year career in community-campus partnership work. I’ve been unemployed since quitting my last job Oct 14,2022 after 9 months.
The last job was me taking a risk to value myself: I took a job offer for a job at a different department in the same institution I’d spent 8 years building up a different job role. In the 8 year role, keeping this who saga short as possible, I was being pushed out due to my burnout & perimenopause symptoms. I had collaboratively built an educational program that could get me through retirement, then the push happened after the program was fully funded and began its pilot.
I went on a six week FMLA leave to get treatment, during which I was invited to apply for the “new job”. Turns out the new job was a super toxic environment. While it doubled my previous salary, after so many years of this constant stress I had had enough and chose my health and quit.
Now, after using part of my very meager retirement savings to try to navigate my available options, I have accepted the complete changes my health has had on my overall, “former” life & accept I cannot “grind” anymore.
I am planning to try to secure a fully remote full time job at any reputable institution of higher education that will hire me & qualifies for PSLF so I can keep trying to earn my PSLF loan forgiveness and also save for a tiny house.
My plan within the next year is to move fully into a tiny house on wheels I save up to finance / payoff as I work and live in reputable tiny home communities where I lease a lot to park/live in community that will look after me, and, I can focus my now limited energies on contributing to so I feel alive again & like I am part of life while remaining mature/not believing the being used/taken advantage of trends will destroy me.
I am never married (not by choice – nothing has worked out), no kids (not by choice but can’t afford them & now shouldn’t have them at my age & alone – I can’t do it alone while I deeply respect those who can & do), haven’t had pets in years due to weird work schedule + not being able to afford pets. I have one good friend of over 30 years who loves me completely and I fight to sustain our friendship as this all has consumed me & I no longer know what I have to give to anyone. I am so tired of feeling hopeless after no therapy working out, nothing working out.
To me, my experience is beyond burnout, depression & anxiety: it’s “why do I exist? If my only purpose is to be used up, why do I keep trying to make a life? How do I make a life now?”
While I feel I am a shell of my former self, I still wake up everyday. Since I do & until I don’t, I fight to believe two things: (1) my life & every life has meaning & value no matter how much has tried to destroy us & take advantage of our passion for life & community, and; (2) if I don’t give up hope that one job + one push at the tiny house build/move brings me my version of financial freedom, then I have the strength and resilience to find love in me to contribute to the few in my life and that I have been placed to impact.
My ask: like many of us trying to make lives out of all the things around us trying to destroy us (especially work & this whole managing your income to live = “work to live not live to work” saga), I am wondering what has helped any of you in similar battles keep going. Have any of you created a foundation for peace of mind and well being that you feel good about getting you to and through retirement?