It was January last year that did it, the previous Christmas had been one of the worst ever work wise, non stop calls from my Malaysia based manager who felt he could call me 24x7x365 because I was the only “employed” (not contractor) engineer in Australia and with 37+ years in technical IT roles, yes I had/have the skills.
The calls continued into January and the role was feeling more and more like I was now in an “Indian call centre” and finally a week into January, I was seriously looking at a locked desk drawer that contained 4 full boxes of very strong opiates
A bit of background is required here to explain the opiates, back in 2014, I was diagnosed in the local hospital emergency rooms with bowel cancer, 5 hours after waking in, I was in major life saving surgery for a previously undiagnosed tumor that had almost completed bursting out of my bowel and was days from killing me. While in hospital for that, the bulging disk in my lower back was also made worse and opiates prescribed for the pain.
For the sake of my wife, kids and family and because I had lost the key to the locked drawer, I managed to temporarily pull myself out of that deep deep dark hole and forced a change in my life.
I tried firstly to modify the role, but little progress was made fighting the system when I was employed by a very large multinational french owned company and I was merely a small pawn in the organization.
Roll onto April and I gave up the fight. I handed in my resignation and with bankruptcy closing in fast (Sydney rent, bills, debt agreement etc) and with serious ageism being ripe in the Aussie workforce, I went the next step and gave up working.
Instead we sold the wife's 2016 Toyota (my 2004 Subaru was sold 3 months earlier as it was unregistered and we could not afford to fix and register again) after doing a deal with the bank over the defaulting loan, we brought a much older but cheaper car, brought a 2nd hand camper trailer and became pre retirement (I am in late 50's, not quite old enough to officially retire) greying nomads.
We have now been living in the tent for about 10 months, staying in caravan parks, working with volunteer organizations for campsites, food and power and receiving the government unemployment and carer pension (my wife has multiple medical conditions and is unable to work)
And to be honest, as hard as it is to live full time in a tent, it's been a much more rewarding life, 1000% less stress (financial and otherwise) and via the volunteer organization, very mentally rewarding due to the contributions we are making to the local community's.
So much so, I have no plans to return to the rat race known as the workforce. Just 3 short years and we can access our superannuation funds and upgrade our lives which is likely to include a small block of land, a tiny house and a motor home or caravan.