Letter by me to friend re. my decision to quit my job and move to the lake district.
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Hello xxxxxx! I have been thinking about your question. I can report that I am very happy with my decision, and I feel it has been a good move. I haven't regretted it once, although I still look back to my time with fondness!
I have never been fitter for one. I go out mountain biking, running, kayaking or walking at least two or three times a week and always on the best weather days. Plus lugging backs of laundry up the stairs at the hostel and so on. :) Mountain biking is my new passion really. But just being up here where it is quiet and beautiful is an end in itself. I have had plenty of visits from friends from back home (but not too many visits!) which is lovely.
I think there were two types of reasons for my decision; reasons to leave the old job, and reason to do this particular new one. Reasons to leave were: starting to feel like i would become a lifer and potentially feeling trapped, long commute, didn't like northampton/MK that much, RSI symptoms getting worse, fed up of the office every day, sedentary lifestyle...
I suppose the career question is a big one; I like to think that I could still resume a career in engineering/software if I so wished. Also I'm still working on my OU maths degree which hopefully opens things up a bit. But also having had this breathing space and dropping off the treadmill, so to speak, has opened up opportunities (in my head at least) as I now feel that I'm coming at things from a bit more of a blank canvas of sorts.
I'm still figuring out where things will lead though. As steve jobs said in a speech; in whatever you do, you can only 'join the dots' looking backwards. Not everything can be planned to lead to a precise outcome; you can do seemingly random stuff which turns out later on to have been crucual to where you are now. But at the time you did it you could never have known.
But i'm not making any plans to change from YHA in the lakes just yet.
Hmm I have gone on a bit!
At the end of the day I what I have learned from this is that it has reinforced is my belief that a change every now and then is a good thing. Be it a change of department, a new job, or something more extreme like i did.
Also my decision was motivated in part by reading the book 'How To Be Idle' by Tom Hodgkinson. Make me think about what is important to me and what isn't etc.. gave me courage. It took about 2-3 years ruminating to actually decide to to this though! Making a decision to do something is often harder than actually doing it! But in the end I knew the time was right.
Also it's worth talking things with people, to see if your ideas stand up (and also make them more real, in a way), but not necessarily be too influenced with what they say or put off by negative responses. Especially parents, mine were not really very keen on my idea and tended to focus on the negatives, but now I think they are convinced.
As a wise friend (who'd had a happy an successful life) once said to me: when you have a hard decision to make then by definition there must be pros and cons to each outcome; so whatever you decide, it will turn out to be the right decision because you get positives either way (sort of a paradox but liberating:)!
Regards :)
Nick
