Dear anti-work reddit,
How do you deal with the fear of leaving your “technically very decent” full-time reliable work?
I have a small company of my own; and it has never stable enough (I think) to become my primary employment. I'm loosing my mind maintaining both positions for so long, but I'm also so afraid to lose that solid reliable Corp paycheck and health insurance.
For context; I have a fully remote job as an IT technician. It's, on paper, a decent position; and once upon a time, it was, regardless of the below average pay for an IT position in my area.
I have been at this company for 4 years; the first 2 we're in a slightly different in-office position and I transferred to the remote position I have now maybe 6 months before “covid happened”.
Aside from this job, I am also a professional photographer. Before covid hit I had a full schedule of photo based side jobs and projects. I needed the extra income from that work to pay off some medical depts that the insurance from my main employer did not cover.
However, once covid came along, all those 'people/event oriented' side jobs went away and I was suddenly unable to pay both my bills & debts.
It was at that point that I looked at my pile of photo equipment and thought back to when I had been modeling casually for fun a few years before.
This all inevitably resulted in my deciding to professionally shoot “spicy content”, a lot cosplay related, first on OnlyFans and then Later on my own independent website.
Over time, I also built other forms of passive income through merch sales & digital downloads, and took on more hands on work in the form of web/app design, consulting, social media management.
For about the past year and a half, this work has been making, at minimum, 2k more than my corp paychecks each month. Of course some months are higher and some much lower.
During this “over-employed” phase, I was able to pay off my medical depts, complete 3 more necessary and very expensive medical/dental treatments, buy a house, establish some savings, and invest in some renovations.
I fully understand that NONE of the above would have been possible without having this double income and I'm proud that I was able to pull it off.
HOWEVER,
my 'corp day job' which was once pretty laid back has become an overwhelming mess an I now want to leave.
Since covid, the software company I work for has grown exponentially —— but my internal support team has not.
My workload there has increased atleast 4X since new years 2022 alone. And along with that, I often find when looking at the team statistics that I'm doing double (or more) the amount of tickets my teammates are. I am a workaholic by nature, and trying to “do less” while logged in the past couple weeks is becoming extremely stressful as the team can't keep up and is becoming increasingly toxic / aggravated that I'm not picking up the slack I used to.
On top of that my input and project work for the company is being routinely ignored and/or cast asaid.
In the end I'm feeling disrespected, overworked, and downright used by this company and want to leave.
In conclusion;
I have reached a level of financial comfort having 2 (more like 3 now) jobs that I never thought would be possible as a millennial.
However I am also ow royally loosing my shit and unable to enjoy my life because of how much I am working.
I have a family and home, so that weighs heavily in this. I have this heavy fear that if my business do badly for a month or more my family will suffer. And being that a lot of this story started out with being in medical dept, I'm also a bit terrified of being fully without any insurance.
If I quit my corporate day job; i can make just as much as I do there (and more often times) while actually working fewer hours. And I know realistically with my work ethic and drive, being able to put more focused time into my own businesses will only enable them to grow more and be more filling.
But, is it actually worth the risk of loosing the one time I've felt financially secure? Especially while going into an economic recession??